Improving Environmental Enforcement
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has issued a consultation paper entitled “Fairer and Better Environmental Enforcement” seeking views on its proposals for changes to the enforcement procedures to try to create a more proportionate, fair and more effective approach to enforcing environmental criminal offences in England and Wales. The consultation period is open until 14 October 2009.
The Government is proposing that the Environment Agency, Natural England and the Countryside Council for Wales will be able to use the civil sanctions enabled by the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions (RES) Act 2008. In appropriate cases, the regulator then has an effective alternative route to criminal prosecution.
Civil sanctions can include:
- raising awareness of what people need to do in order to comply with environmental law and the provision of advice and guidance to help people to achieve compliance;
- Enforcement Undertakings setting out the measures which people propose to take to put matters right;
- Notice of Intent to impose a civil sanction;
- Stop Notices to make the recipient stop the activity identified in the notice;
- Compliance Notices can be issued which require an operator to take actions to comply with the law or to return to compliance within a specified period;
- Restoration Notices will be introduced which require an operator to take steps within a stated period to restore harm caused by non-compliance so far as possible;
- Fixed Monetary Penalties can also be imposed which are relatively low level fines fixed by legislation for specified minor offences; or
- Variable Monetary Penalties can be imposed which are proportionate monetary penalties for more serious offences where the regulator decides that prosecution is not in the public interest.
The consultation paper also proposes measures to strengthen the powers of the criminal courts to help them when sentencing the most serious cases of breach of environmental law. This is to address concerns that too often offenders are still left with a financial benefit from non-compliance with environmental law even after a criminal prosecution and this does not help to deter non-compliance and undermines the competiveness of compliant companies. There is also often no requirement on offenders to restore any damage caused by their actions. There will be a further consultation on the new proposed sentencing powers.
