announced the abolition of Ofwat in July last year<\/a>, then environment secretary Steve Reed said the Environment Agency and Natural England would retain their non-water remits and responsibilities.\u00a0<\/p>\nHowever, in today\u2019s report, PAC members said Defra should use water-regulation reform as an \u201copportunity\u201d to examine the case for bringing the Environment Agency and Natural England together as a single entity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They said regulators faced a \u201clack of strategic direction\u201d from Defra that limited their ability to plan coherently, target resources effectively and demonstrate how their work contributes to statutory environmental objectives. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a first step towards developing a coordinated plan, Defra should set out a clear vision for environmental regulation with a focus on what matters and what makes the most difference,\u201d they said. \u201cDefra should take the opportunity presented by the changes in water regulation to explore the merits of bringing all its regulatory functions together to improve efficiency and enable the establishment of a single organisational culture which balances protection and enhancement of nature and the environment with supporting economic growth.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
MPs added: \u201cIf Natural England and the Environment Agency are not to be merged, then Defra should conduct a thorough examination to determine where they could cooperate more closely, such as in planning, legal functions, comprehensive advice and IT.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
PAC said that as the \u201clarge volume\u201d of activity related to regulatory reform did not appear well co-ordinated, they are \u201csceptical that regulators have the resources and skills to manage the upcoming changes\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Committee members said that within six months Defra should publish a detailed plan setting out how it intends to change the overall regulatory environment, how it is implementing the 149 recommendations, what assurance it has that regulators have the resources they need, and when the change will be completed. \u00a0<\/p>\n
They added that the plan should include a clear statement of what legislative change is required and when.\u00a0<\/p>\n
PAC chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said the UK has \u201cobvious and glaring\u201d problems with how environmental regulation is delivered. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cRegulators are drowning in recommendations from multiple reviews,\u201d he said. \u201cOur report finds that the current position that regulators are not sufficiently resourced to follow this multiplicity of recommendations, while still carrying out their responsibilities towards the environment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOne obvious solution to reduce the complexity which government should consider would be a merging of the responsibilities of Natural England and the Environment Agency. Whilst they do have slightly different roles in regulating the environment, some of their larger functions, such as monitoring the planning system and taking enforcement action significantly overlap. A single culture would be able to more coherently face outwards towards sectors that need to engage.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
At a PAC hearing last week, on regulating for growth,\u00a0 HM Treasury’s DG for growth and productivity, Jessica Glover, suggested Defra had gone down a different route.<\/p>\n
She said merging regulators and bodies “takes an awful lot of time, effort and energy that could be spent making sure that you are co-operating effectively to support the aims you share”, and that Defra has instead introduced a lead environmental regulator model, which it is piloting on the Lower Thames Crossing and\u00a0East West Rail.<\/p>\n
“Those big infrastructure projects, as far as the project is concerned, just have one lead regulator,” she said.\u00a0“They go to that regulator, and it is that regulator\u2019s job to check what any other relevant regulators are providing\u00a0\u2013\u00a0they are like a single front door for the project.”<\/p>\n
Glover said Defra has also established an infrastructure board and a developers\u2019 council, which are bodies designed to bring together the relevant people to make sure that problems “are being identified upstream, and that they are then surfaced, escalated and addressed”.<\/p>\n
Civil Service World sought a response from Defra. It had not provided one at the time of publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs should take advantage of wide-ranging plans for regulatory change and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-497774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}