The Environment Agency has a budget of £2.2 bn from taxpayer grants, fees, charges and fines. Its main duties are river and flood water management, waste management, clean air and good landscape and soil management.
Despite this largesse they have allowed many large illegal waste sites to spring up with illegal tipping in broad daylight and plain sight. They have the powers to tackle this. Waste businesses need licences, they need approved sites with planning permission, they need to be inspected and should pay their taxes. The state has every reason to enforce all this. So can’t the Environment Agency do so?
If independent Agencies are to keep their funding and independence they do need to exercise their powers in the public interest and do worthwhile jobs. Most taxpayers want the Agency to stop illegal tipping.
The Agency makes other bad mistakes. On a stretch of the Thames where the riverside path should go over a wooden bridge the EA closed the bridge claiming it needed repair. As the years pass so the bridge tumbles into worse repair and the weeds and brambles ensnare it. Why? Get on with maintaining it. Remember a stitch in time saves nine. The EA should get better at looking after public assets.
On a much bigger scale the EA damaged the Somerset levels by allowing too much flooding. Ministers did need to intervene to save people’s homes.
January 24, 2026
The landfill tax was introduced in 1996 by the Conservative SoS Environment John Gummer and was the UK’s first environmental tax
The landfill tax is the reason for the illegal dumping of waste. The standard rate of tax will increase on 1 April 2026 in line with RPI and rounded to the nearest 5 pence. The lower tax rate will increase by the cash amount of the increase in the standard rate to £8.65 per ton, on its way to equivalence with the standard rate of £130.75/ton
Obviously, the organised crime groups who dump the waste can undercut these charges. The people to go after are the sources of the waste, who must know what is going on. So must the police
Once again we find that our boys in blue are ignoring a blatant breach of the law. Doubtless, the EA will deny responsibility and say it’s the police who should stop it, as the perpetrators are organised criminals. The police will deny responsibility, saying its a civil matter – and look the other way. Just as they have been ignoring the blatant fox-hunting with dogs masquerading as trail hunting, which has required a change in legislation to stop.
January 24, 2026
You are attacking the wrong body. It’s those renting out land to illegal tippers you should be hounding. The EA can’t be everywhere all the time.
Re. Somerset levels. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to suggest they flooded due to years of EU bans on dredging.
January 24, 2026
I had a lot to do with the EA about 15-23 yrs ago, meeting the leadership at APPGs and other forums and dealing with regional staff in the southern region.
They were beholden to the environment lobby. The lobby had ensured that environmental legislation (conservation) was over-strong. Any EU regs were gold-plated. In addition they had infiltrated at all levels in the organisation, to ensure that interpretation of that legislation was always on the lobby’s side.
Agency engineers were marginalised by this, many projects were effectively stopped by the Agency’s own conservation bureaucrats or even NGOs (which were given internal access to the Agency’s decision making bodies). This hindered what I wanted to get done (flood & erosion defences).
More pertinent here is that other things were marginalised, too. Including waste licencing and enforcement (it wasn’t seen as a wildlife conservation issue, so resources were starved). I dare say this has got worse over the intervening years.
January 24, 2026
The Somerset Levels is a classic example of putting International influence ahead of National interest.
The Levels were allowed to quietly go into disrepair by the EUs policy of ‘rewilding’ and the flawed good intention of re-establishing wild life areas for birds and wetland creatures. The flood gates and pumping stations were purposely left to decay into disrepair allowing nature to reclaim the Levels.
It was a public policy that only changed when the environment minister Owen Patterson overruled the eco-loons and ordered the repair of the dykes dams tide valves and pumps.
Since then the biblical scale of flooding prior to his intervention have stopped.
It is a pity his career ended so badly but even the heroes have faults….
January 24, 2026
the national trust is bad too. i know coastal beauty spots that have been protected for centuries by continually having their sea defences repaired, handed over to the national trust and they decide to stop the modest repairs to the sea wall… so the beauty spot becomes dangerous and eventually falls into the sea. as an organisation which has been handed a lot of property over the years in peoples wills, and instead of tax payments in deals with hmrc, they are holding land for all of us. but their custodianship is terrible.
January 24, 2026
The worst thing is that when there us illegal tipping it becomes the problem of the landowners. This is grossly unfair
Another stupid fear is that silt which is high in nutrients is now classed as toxic waste and cannot be spread as fertiliser which was the practice for centuries. Now the landowners have to pay to dispose of it.
Slavishly following EU rules which wr are supposed to have left is the reason for many problems.
January 24, 2026
Yet another Government Department where failure has no penalty for those who work within it, but that can have catastrophic costs to residents who are affected with flooding and/or toxic waste.
Why do they not object to building on flood plains, many examples locally in Wokingham, Winnersh, and Earley.
Why do they or the Council not keep rivers, ditches, and drains clear and free flowing.
Numerous examples of fallen trees, collapsed banks, and debris in our water courses which impede water flow.
We do not seem to dredge water courses any more due we are informed to EU legislation at the time, classifying the spoil as “toxic waste” But If it is not really toxic (and we dredged water courses for hundreds of years in the past) and we are no longer in the EU, why do we not repeal it ?
So many other examples.
January 24, 2026
Trump stepped on a landmine when he made the unfortunate comments about NATO troops not doing any Frontline work.
For Starmer to suddenly become our soldiers best friend and demand an apology is a bit rich though. He’s not helping our SAS Veterans with his legislation and he’s certainly not putting Defence at the top of his priorities (or spending).
Trump for all his verbal blundering, is right to say that the Europeans (and UK) have relied on the US for far too long. They are getting that message loud and clear now though. Trump is forcing them to rearm but I remain convinced all of this is about the US needing to face West and focus on China…