An investigation by Unearthed has revealed that England’s beleaguered environmental regulator has been turning up late – or not at all – to three out of every four of the country’s worst pollution incidents.

Between January 2017 and October 2023, the Environment Agency (EA) missed its own response time targets for more than 3,400 serious pollution incidents – 74% of the total. These included major spills of oil, slurry and sewage.

In hundreds of cases, it took environment officers weeks – or even months – to arrive on the scene. For almost a thousand cases, the agency was unable to provide any record of its officers ever attending the incident.

Former environment officers told Unearthed that, by failing to get to major incidents on time (or at all), the agency was missing opportunities to reduce harm to the environment, and to gather evidence for criminal prosecutions.

In recent years, the agency has adopted a policy of not routinely investigating reports of apparently lower-impact pollution, telling the government ‘you get the environment you pay for’. But this investigation reveals for the first time how it is coping with the most serious incidents.

Charles Watson, chair of the River Action campaign group, told Unearthed that “these appalling findings essentially bear witness to a complete collapse in environmental protection in this country.”

The story is covered in the Times (£) and through Press Association.