Environment Agency consults on use of new enforcement powers

The Environment Agency has launched a consultation on implementing its new civil sanction enforcement powers.

The new powers – announced by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs last month – include the ability to issue fixed or variable monetary penalty notices. A variable penalty for an offence that could be tried in the Crown Court can be no higher than £250,000.

The Agency will also be able to issue compliance notices, restoration notices and stop notices, and for the first time accept undertakings from businesses that they will take corrective action.

The consultation paper sets out:

• How civil sanctions fit into the better regulation agenda
• The Agency s proposed approach to sanctioning
• Where civil sanctions would be used and potential future developments
• The documents and processes it proposes to use in approaching sanctioning in future
• The governance it proposes to use to ensure public and business confidence in the Agency’s application of sanctions, and
• How civil sanctions affect the Agency’s tools and its work with other regulators.

Describing its current enforcement tools as “inflexible”, the Agency said: “The government’s new civil sanctions aim to provide us with more flexible and proportionate options that work alongside our existing choices to achieve better outcomes for business, people and the environment. They allow us firstly to be more responsive and flexible in making sanctions proportionate to an offence and secondly to act swiftly to prevent and restore environmental damage.”

The Agency suggested that being able to apply the right interventions would bring higher levels of compliance, provide greater protection for the environment and a level playing field for legitimate businesses.

It added: “Civil sanctions will not result in major changes to the overall level of enforcement. [They] will be introduced for some but not all of the regimes that we enforce and so initially will have a limited effect on those we regulate.”

The agency said it would still normally prosecute “where there is deliberate, reckless activity or grave effects”. Money raised from use of the sanctions will go into central government accounts and not to the Agency.

The consultation closes on 7 May 2010, and the Agency expects to star using its powers in September this year.

Defra is currently consulting with the local authority sector, the Local Better Regulation Office, businesses and other groups about possible proposals for councils to also be given use of civil sanctions. However, this would require separate legislation and consultation.

A copy of the consultation paper can be accessed here.