Corporate report

Whistleblowing about environmental malpractice: annual report 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024

Updated 14 October 2024

Applies to England

1. Introduction

The Environment Agency is designated as a prescribed person for whistleblowing. Workers can contact the Environment Agency about:

• acts or omissions which have an actual or potential impact on the environment
• the management or regulation of the environment

This includes those relating to:  

• flooding
• pollution
• abstraction of water
• the flow of rivers
• inland fisheries and migratory salmon or trout

Under the Prescribed Persons (Reports on Disclosures of Information) Regulations 2017, commonly known as ‘whistleblowing’. Under these regulations we must act on any third-party disclosures made to us about environmental malpractice.

These regulations also require us to produce an annual report on whistleblowing disclosures received by us.

This report covers the reporting period of 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.

2. How we receive reports

The Environment Agency can receive reports in a variety of ways, by:

• phone to our customer contact centre
• a dedicated incident communication centre hotline
• email
• post
• social media
• direct contact with officers

Reports are often about matters that are already subject to investigation or inspection at regulated facilities. All reports are treated confidentially.

We may not always be able to act on reports (or log them as a qualifying disclosure), for example:

• where they are not within our geographic or regulatory remit, in which case we may pass them to the appropriate authority
• anonymous reports that contain insufficient information for us to be able to determine that they are from a whistleblower
• anonymous reports with insufficient data for us to action and where we are unable to check or corroborate the details
• in rare cases we may be limited in the action we can take if we believe that it may breach the confidentiality of an anonymous reporter

3. Number of disclosures

In this reporting period, the Environment Agency received 39 disclosures which were identified as potentially whistleblowing matters on initial assessment. Of these, 32 reports were assessed as ‘qualifying disclosures’ in that they were from a worker reporting matters within our remit.

Of the 32 reports that we assessed as qualifying:

• 20 related to regulated waste activities
• 4 related to water companies
• 4 were not regulated by the Environment Agency but the activities being reported fell within our remit
• one related to our remit over fisheries activities
• 2 related to manufacturing processes
• 1 related to regulated nuclear/radiological activities

All the reports were logged, assessed and where verified, passed to the relevant Area or National operational teams to consider and follow up as necessary. This was in accordance with our policies on incident categorisation and attendance.

The individual reports can be categorised or broken down in a variety of ways depending on the criteria applied. Due to this, some will have more than one, or indeed none of the following characteristics, hence these figures are not cumulative. This breakdown is purely to demonstrate some of the key points arising from the reports:

• 6 of the reports were anonymous limiting how and, in some cases whether we could respond to them without potentially breaching the whistle-blowers confidentiality
• 9 of the reports related to major investigations already under investigation but added to the intelligence cases
• 26 reports were passed to Area or National operational teams. Any that related to actual environmental impact were attended unless they were assessed as of a no or minor potential impact and where no further corroborating reports were received. However they were all logged in the relevant systems which automatically flag should further related reports be received. There are ongoing investigations into several of the cases

In several cases, despite leaving contact details, the reporters did not respond to repeated requests for further information. In some cases the contact details are thought to be false.

On the 26 March 2024 (5 days before the end of this reporting period) a new portal for whistleblowers was introduced. Next year’s annual report will include an assessment of the impact the new portal has had.

4. The impact on the Environment Agency

Whistleblowing disclosures continue to influence and improve our response to environmental incidents and concerns. They provide a unique insight into operations and issues with our regulation of businesses. These disclosures assist us in addressing our key objectives of:

• protecting and improving water, land and biodiversity
• improving the way we work as a regulator to protect people and the environment

The construction of the whistleblowing portal and the guidance produced for workers was directly influenced by the reports we were receiving. We have continued to review and modify our whistleblowing systems and further improvements will shortly be introduced. This should allow us to better inform people who make disclosures to us to ensure they are directed quickly to the right people.

5. When to report environmental malpractice

We are listed as a ‘prescribed person’ in the Public Interest Disclosure (Prescribed Persons) Order 2014. This means that you can contact us directly about environmental malpractice.

You should report environmental malpractice to us if it affects the natural environment or the management or regulation of the environment.

Find out more about what the Environment Agency is responsible for.

Find out about other ways you can report whistleblowing.

6. Contact the Environment Agency

6.1 General enquiries

National Customer Contact Centre
PO Box 544
Rotherham
S60 1BY

Email enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk.

Telephone 03708 506 506 Telephone from outside the UK +44 (0) 114 282 5312 Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm GMT.

6.2 Environment incident hotline

Open 24-hours:

0800 80 70 60

7. Whistleblowing by workers

This can be done in confidence through this online portal: Whistleblowing: reporting serious wrongdoing to the Environment Agency