Recent, entirely misleading coverage by Channel 4 claims that the Environment Agency has prioritised the use of enforcement undertakings, rather than criminal prosecutions, against water companies for serious pollution incidents.
We completely reject this characterisation. Enforcement undertakings represent one of the many tools in the Environment Agency’s arsenal – but we continue to bring forward prosecutions for the most serious offences.
Since 2021 we’ve prosecuted and secured convictions in 37 cases against water companies. The recent coverage selectively concentrated on a very limited dataset where offending and sentence had occurred in the last five years – overlooking our prosecutions of very significant cases, many of which are now imminently awaiting sentence. Timings for sentencing rest entirely with the courts, rather than with the Environment Agency.
We are stepping up our enforcement activity right across the board, having completed over 10,000 inspections of water companies in the last year. This step change has also seen a record sum of £8.5 million raised through enforcement undertakings.
Enforcement undertakings are legally binding agreements between the Environment Agency and companies that have breached environmental rules. The undertaking requires the company concerned to take steps to prevent repetition of the offending and to put right the damage it has caused.
This money can help deliver immediate benefits to the environment, without requiring lengthy and uncertain court proceedings, which can take years to secure meaningful penalties. They are a complement to our wider enforcement work – not a replacement – and we will not pass up opportunities to repair damage and improve our waterways.
Examples of the kind of impacts enforcement undertakings can have include:
- Over £4.5 million raised from Severn Trent which has helped local charities including the Trent Rivers Trust and Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust deliver targeted improvements in the affected catchments through measures such as habitat restoration, barrier removal and water quality improvements.
- £300,000 paid by Wessex Water following their pollution of the River Gascoigne, being used by the Yeovil Rivers Community Trust to improve habitats in the area, including vital work to support endangered water vole populations. It will create reedbeds, wetlands and ponds at Yeovil Country Park and along Preston Brook.
With more people, better data, and stronger powers, we are holding water companies to account more than ever.
An Environment Agency spokesperson said:
“These claims are nonsense. Since 2021 we’ve prosecuted and secured convictions in 37 cases against water companies.
“Prosecutions are just one tool against water pollution, and we have also levied a record £8.5 million in enforcement undertakings against water companies in the last year alone, directly restoring harm done to our waterways and improving water quality for communities across the country."
2 comments
Comment by Ian Gregory posted on
I doubt these days anyone believes what the EA says.
Comment by Ethan C posted on
The Environment Agency’s blog does not rebut Channel 4’s investigation — it confirms its premise while hoping the audience won’t notice.
Channel 4 did not claim the Environment Agency has never prosecuted a water company. It showed something far more damning: that in recent years, for repeated and serious pollution incidents, water companies have routinely avoided court, criminal sanction, and reputational consequence through enforcement undertakings — a mechanism that permanently forecloses prosecution once accepted.
1. “37 convictions since 2021” is a distraction, not a defence
The EA’s headline figure collapses under scrutiny. As Channel 4 correctly highlighted, what matters is not how many convictions exist in a spreadsheet, but whether recent serious pollution is being met with timely, deterrent enforcement.
• Many of the EA’s cited convictions relate to offences that occurred many years ago, with sentencing delayed by court backlogs and regulatory inertia.
• When Channel 4 examined incidents where pollution and sanction fell within the same recent window, prosecutions were conspicuously absent — replaced instead by civil deals proposed by the offenders themselves.
That is not selective journalism. That is asking the right question.
2. Enforcement undertakings are not “restorative justice” when harm is systemic
The EA repeats the line that enforcement undertakings “deliver immediate environmental benefits”. That is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether they are appropriate for repeat offenders operating failing systems across hundreds of sites.
Independent legal and NGO analysis shows:
• Enforcement undertakings bar any future prosecution for the same offence, even by third parties.
• They have been accepted repeatedly from the same companies for highly similar failings, across multiple locations.
• Payments are trivial compared to revenues, dividends, and infrastructure neglect — meaning they do not alter corporate behaviour.
In any other regulated sector, this would be described plainly: companies paying to close down criminal exposure while continuing the same practices elsewhere.
3. The regulators themselves admit failure
The most damning evidence against the EA’s blog is not Channel 4 — it is the National Audit Office.
The NAO has formally concluded that:
• Water regulators, including the EA, failed to deliver a trusted or resilient system
• Enforcement has been too slow, too fragmented, and too weak to drive improvement
• Pollution incidents remained high while confidence collapsed
When government responds by rewriting the law, introducing automatic penalties, personal liability, and dismantling the existing regulatory architecture, it is not a vote of confidence. It is an admission of systemic failure.
4. Calling this “nonsense” avoids the real charge
Channel 4’s documentary asked a question the Environment Agency still hasn’t answered:
If enforcement is working, why are England’s rivers in the worst state in living memory?
More inspections, more paperwork, and more press releases are not substitutes for credible deterrence. A regulatory model that relies on negotiated civil settlements with repeat offenders — while pollution worsens — is not pragmatism. It is regulatory capture by exhaustion.
Conclusion
Channel 4 did not mislead the public. It reflected what campaigners, auditors, courts, and now legislators have already accepted:
England’s water enforcement regime has protected companies from consequence far more efficiently than it has protected rivers from pollution.
That is not sensationalism.
It is the reason the system is being torn up and rebuilt.