The head of the independent environmental watchdog is in talks with the environment minister over delays in meeting key targets to tackle water and air pollution and halt the decline of nature.
Dame Glenys Stacey, Chair of the Office for the Environment (OEP), told Therese Coffey, the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, that the possibility of taking formal enforcement action against the Government for multiple missed targets was was kept under active review. OEP may initiate an investigation and take legal action if deemed necessary.
Stacey is meeting with Coffey after the government missed a key deadline to come up with targets for water quality and halting environmental degradation, which are key elements of its own Environment Act.
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Coffey said the goals underpinning the country’s nature recovery would not be published on October 31 as promised, but did not give a new deadline.
Environmental charities including the RSPB, wildlife trusts and the National Trust have lodged a complaint with the OEP and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) over the failure to meet new legally binding targets for air quality, water health, nature and Waste Management. They also complained about failures to deliver on promised policies to tackle pollution, including a deposit return scheme for plastic bottles first promised by Michael Gove in 2018.
The charities said the spate of missed deadlines suggested there was a risk of delay becoming the default culture within Defra.
Ruth Chambers, of the Greener UK coalition, said: “By missing this deadline, the Government is undermining its own flagship legislation. We call on the new Secretary of State to make this an urgent priority and set ambitious targets to restore our natural environment.
Stacey’s meeting with Coffey was scheduled to address the strengthening of goals and the delay in their publication. “The targets proposed earlier this year are welcome in many ways,” she said in a letter to Coffey. “However, there is room for improvement and a chance, yet, to present a suitably ambitious and comprehensive set of targets.”
Her concerns are backed by environmental groups who want the delay in publication to be used to present a stronger set of targets ahead of the UN Conference on Biodiversity (Cop15) in December.
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Stacey warned Coffey that it was imperative that the environmental targets be implemented by the end of this calendar year at the latest. “Further delay unduly risks the implementation of important environmental policies so necessary to meet the government’s environmental commitments,” she said.
“This is not an isolated case of a legal deadline being missed. I have set out … details of other environmental legislation deadlines which appear to have been missed recently … We remain concerned that there is a pattern of statutory deadlines being missed.
“It is in this context, and the importance of not complying with landmark domestic legislation, that we will keep our decisions about the use of any formal enforcement powers under active review as you move forward with your work now.”
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