As Public Rage Grew, UK Environment's Top Priority Was Blocking Internal Dissent On Sewage Crisis [View all]

[hatrack]

The internal email dropped into staff inboxes at a time when public outrage about pollution in English rivers was in full cry, generating parliamentary debates, demonstrations and mass petitions. But within the agency responsible for protecting and enhancing the environment the focus was on gagging staff with the threat of dismissal if they discussed its work both inside and outside the organisation.

Chief executive James Bevan, a former Foreign Office mandarin who was appointed in 2015 to run the regulator, issued a draconian warning silencing staff after a wave of criticism about its performance protecting rivers. Staff should not, he said, “openly criticise or discredit the organisation in the media or on social media” or “disclose any confidential information in connection with the Environment Agency to anyone who is not authorised to received it”.

EDIT

Why Bevan felt compelled to issue his message when he did can perhaps be traced back to a few weeks before in November last year, when staff were given formal instructions to shut down and stop investigating low level pollution events, so-called level 3 and 4 incidents. The memo, seen by the Guardian, clearly laid out the dire state of the organisation’s investigative and enforcement capabilities. “We do not have sufficient funding to continue to provide our current level of environment management incident response and have made it clear to government that you get the environment you pay for,” it read. “As a result, we have decided to reduce our response to unfunded low and no impact environmental incidents.”

The memo admitted this would not be popular with the public, many of whom work as volunteers to plug gaps in Environment Agency monitoring of rivers to track pollution. “This is not an easy transition and our officers and advisers are facing criticism from our customers for the reduction in our service,” it read.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/29/it-is-desperate-how-environment-agency-staff-were-silenced-as-pollution-worsened