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Environment Protection: Enforcement

Answer

The Environment Agency (EA) make decisions on how it responds to all environmental permit breaches using its Enforcement and Sanctions Policy. Permit breaches can be handled through a regulatory response or through formal enforcement action.

Please note, enforcement action will appear to be decreasing disproportionately but this reflects ongoing investigations which have not yet concluded the process for consideration of enforcement sanctions (i.e. governance process).

Question	How many environmental permit breaches were recorded by the EA in each year between 2019 and 2025?	How many were classified as category 1, 2 and 3?	What proportion resulted in formal enforcement action? Please Note: On average 90% of the figures for Cat 1-3 breaches below are Category 3. In line with the EA enforcement and sanctions policy these cases will receive an ongoing regulatory response from its officers and the remaining breaches may require formal enforcement action . The percentage of formal enforcement action is based only on the number of breaches which it considered may require a formal enforcement response.
Year (Calendar)	Total Number Breaches	Breaches classified as Cat 1-3	Total Number of Cat 1-3 permit breaches considered for Formal Enforcement Action.	Number of Cat 1-3 permit breaches considered and resulted in Formal Enforcement Action	% Of Cat 1-3 permit Breaches considered and resulted in Formal Enforcement Action
2019	19068	15094	1004	662	66%
2020	12556	10441	748	443	59%
2021	12793	11795	775	382	49%
2022	14873	11884	882	266	30%
2023	19491	13885	1261	192	15%
2024	19771	15239	1281	131	10%
2025	19524	14545	1477	67	5%

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

8484

Session

2026-27

Subjects

Enforcement Environment protection

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk