Agency hits illegal waste site target in 2021/22

The Agency published its annual report and accounts for the financial year covering April 2021 to March 2022 yesterday (26 October).

Despite the report showing the Agency met its target, it says it “continues to be cautious” about the results due to the transition out of the pandemic, which it says has impacted on reporting levels and “site substantiation”.

The report reads: “The true number of illegal sites is likely to be greater and we anticipate it to increase over the coming year.”

The Agency has come under fire for its response to waste crime in recent times. It notes that in April the National Audit Office recommended it improved its data on waste crime and strengthened its understanding of the resources used to tackle it (see letsrecycle.com story).

The Agency said this was an area it was already working on and would continue to do so in 2022/23.

Last week, the Public Accounts Committee criticised the Agency for making only “slow and piecemeal” progress in implementing the 2018 Resources and Waste Strategy, which targets eliminating waste crime by 2043 (see letsrecycle.com story).

Waste crime

The Environment Agency estimates around 34 million tonnes of waste is illegally managed every year, costing the economy around £1 billion, with perpetrators often involved in “other serious crimes like drug dealing”. The Agency says it “stopped” 561 sites in the 2021/22 financial year.

The true number of illegal sites is likely to be greater [than 194] and we anticipate it to increase over the coming year

• Environment Agency

Within its annual report the Agency lists a few of its “successes” in 2020/21. Firstly, it says it conducted a joint operation with the police in April 2021 as part of a major investigation into an organised crime group dumping and burying thousands of tonnes of illegal waste at sites across the Midlands. Five suspects were arrested, the Agency says, “significant amounts” of evidence and cash were recovered and the police are now investigating several other offences, including firearms and drugs.

Next, the Agency notes that, five years after it secured the conviction of a Darlington man for illegal dumping of waste at a farm in County Durham, it went back to court to challenge his failure to pay back £350,000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act. He has now been jailed for three years.

And, the report says Agency enforcement officers “swooped” on a farm in Worcestershire where a man received a 26-month prison sentence in 2018 for operating an illegal waste site where he dumped, buried or burned 25,000 tonnes of waste. This time, the Agency says it found and seized several stolen vehicles, now the subject of a criminal investigation by West Mercia Police.

Accounts

As of 31 March 2022, the Environment Agency had 10,924 “full-time equivalent” employees. Its expenditure for the financial year was £1.9 billion. This is an increase of £259 million from 2020/21.

In a statement, Sir James Bevan, the Agency’s chief executive and accounting officer, said: “The last financial year was one of the toughest many of us have experienced, with the Covid-19 pandemic, rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, the war in Ukraine, along with massive national and international uncertainty.

“Despite all that our staff sustained our critical operations, our incident response, and delivery of the outcomes on which the country depends.”