{"id":13709,"date":"2025-07-16T08:10:03","date_gmt":"2025-07-16T08:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/13709\/"},"modified":"2025-07-16T08:10:03","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T08:10:03","slug":"more-than-150-farms-in-england-caught-illegally-using-local-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/13709\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 150 farms in England caught illegally using local water"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Environment Agency inspects and monitors farms for any licence breach, which can be a prosecutable offence.<\/p>\n

Using a request under the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR), BBC News found that, of the 199 breaches committed by 154 farms between 2022 and June this year, 141 incidents were category one, two or three breaches, all classed as having a foreseeable impact on “human health, quality of life or the environment”.<\/p>\n

But only one farmer was prosecuted and one was given a fine as a civil sanction while 137 were simply given warnings or advice and no action was taken against three.<\/p>\n

There are currently 12 ongoing investigations.<\/p>\n

Ten farms breached their licences during the first five months of this year.<\/p>\n

A further four farms were found to be abstracting water without the necessary licence at all.<\/p>\n

The figures come after a report last week by green watchdog The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), external<\/a> found that some licence-holders would only be inspected once in 20 years and, in 2023\/24, 84% of licences were not being inspected.<\/p>\n

Dr Justin Neal, from the river campaign group Wildfish, said the number of farm over-abstractors uncovered was “the tip of the iceberg”.<\/p>\n

“With a minimal risk of being caught and few prosecutions, there is absolutely no deterrent effect.<\/p>\n

“That means taking too much water is now an acceptable occupational risk,” he explained.<\/p>\n

He added that the exemption that allows farmers to take up to 20,000 litres a day without a licence meant no-one could be sure how much water was being abstracted by farms across England.<\/p>\n

Wildfish is now calling for more inspections and a new enforcement strategy with less focus on advice and greater use of “suitable sanctions” for those who break the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Environment Agency inspects and monitors farms for any licence breach, which can be a prosecutable offence. Using…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,79],"class_list":["post-13709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}