Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340-343)
WEDNESDAY 19 MARCH 2003
MR STEVE
LEE, DR
PAUL LEINSTER
AND DR
MARTIN BIGG
340. Do you have an internal rule about the
amount of time in which you hope to deal with these?
(Dr Leinster) Yes.
341. A further complaint was that somebody had
not heard from the Agency for nine months or that they did not
seem to be replies coming back from them and that there was a
terrible sense of frustration and an almost a lack of engagement.
They did not even know where the thing was in the pipeline.
(Dr Leinster) Again, we would need to take it on a
case-by-case basis. We would hope that that would not be the norm.
There is a lead officer who deals with each application. We do
have standard processes and procedures that we use for the determination
and there are statutory periods that we seek to adhere to in the
delivery of the permitting process.
Diana Organ
342. I just want to come back on a specific
case as an example of whether it is the general and the norm.
I would like to know if you know anything about a company which
I think is called CSG at Sandhurst in Gloucestershire that had
a fire and then the site was flooded by the River Severn and its
licence has been taken away and has not been re-allowed. When
the report came out from the Environment Agency afterwards, although
the site had been monitored very carefully by your officers apparently,
it was discovered, as a result of the incident, that materials
were stored inappropriately, that materials were on the site that
should not have been there and all sorts of processing was going
on for which there was not a licence. It was not a good news story,
certainly for that company and I would say not for the Environment
Agency. Is that somewhere where you were caught out or is this
something that, possibly because of the lack of the resources
that you have, you cannot monitor and regulate and, if you like,
name and shame companies that are not keeping within the regulations?
(Dr Leinster) If I may just say specifically on CSG
Sandhurst, we are in the late stages of prosecution, so we are
not able to discuss CSG in detail. We would be happy to come back
and discuss once the prosecution has finished, but we cannot say
anything which would jeopardise that. In terms of in general though,
whether this is a general thing, one of the things we are trying
to do is to bring in greater standardisation in approach. So,
some of the techniques we are developing just now in the procedures
are to make sure that we have a common understanding of what a
permit breach means. Each site has a permit and it will have permit
conditions within it. Some of the breaches in permit conditions
are administrative, for example where people have taken too long
to submit a report. Others are material and have a significant
environmental impact. What we are doing is making sure that we
have a standard way across all of our regimes to categorise those
permit breaches. Then we are making sure that there is an approach
taken which escalates all the way through from categorising permit
breaches that have been observed all the way through our enforcement
and prosecution policy. And we are one of the few agencies that
has an enforcement and prosecution policy which is actually on
our web-site, so people can see when we will take prosecutions
and when we will not. I would say that we are a lot better than
we were when we initially formed out of 83 organisations and we
have moved a long way and CSG was something which happened two
years ago and a lot of these issues were in fact picked up in
the recent NAO report on the Agency's regulation and one of the
things that the NAO report said was that the Agency has come a
long way, that it has improved, but that it still has things to
do and we recognise that we still have things to do but we do
have an ongoing work programme to improve our regulatory process.
Chairman
343. I am going to finish this meeting. The
Clerk will let you have, by close of play tomorrow, a set of questions
[see supplementary memorandum]. Do you think you could manage
to let us have those back by close of play next Tuesday?
(Dr Leinster) Yes.
Chairman: I will then look at them and make
a judgment as to whether or not we can get any further information
by correspondence or whether we need to make an arrangement to
see you again. I am sorry about that. It is the only sensible
way of working and we have been caught by the events of today
which at least are somewhat less momentous than yesterday, but
involve a great deal more voting. I am sorry that you have had
a mucked-about day, but so have we all.
|
