Corporate report

Environment Agency business plan 2024 to 2025

Published 20 May 2024

Applies to England

1. Introduction

We are the Environment Agency (EA), a non-departmental public body established in 1996 and sponsored by the Department for Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). In our roles as regulator, operator, adviser, responder, and research centre, we are tasked with:

• protecting and enhancing the environment as a whole
• contributing towards sustainable development

Our remit primarily covers England, though our influence and collaboration with other UK environmental bodies and partners extends beyond England’s borders. England represents approximately:

• 13 million hectares of land
• 22,000 miles (35,000 km) of river
• 3,100 miles (5,000 km) of coastline seawards to the three-mile limit, which includes 2 million hectares of coastal waters

Through our work we contribute towards the UK government’s 25 Year Environment Plan (25YEP) which launched in January 2018. It set out 10 ambitious goals relating to key aspects of our remit including:

• the environment
• biodiversity
• air quality
• waste reduction
• climate change mitigation

The Environment Act 2021 legally enshrined the commitment to refresh the 25YEP every 5 years. In 2023 the first review of the 25YEP resulted in the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP). The plan builds upon the vision of the 25YEP and sets actions to achieve its goals. It reflects the UK’s commitment to environmental stewardship and global biodiversity conservation.

Key areas we contribute to include:

• halting biodiversity decline
• clean air
• resource management
• climate change adaptation
• enhancing beauty and heritage

EA2025 – our current 5-year corporate action plan – comes to an end in March 2025. It reflects the ambition of the 25YEP.

This business plan sets out our priorities for 2024 to 2025. It will help focus our delivery as we transition to a new corporate action plan in our 30th anniversary year.

2. Foreword from the Chair

As the primary environmental regulator in England, we exist to create better places for people, wildlife, and the environment. We are here to:

• protect and improve the environment
• support sustainable development

This business plan represents a hugely important and exciting step forward for the Environment Agency. It will guide our delivery towards this mission for 2024 to 2025.

As Chair, I regularly meet with our partners, stakeholders, and communities up and down the country. They tell me they want the Environment Agency to:

• keep rivers clean
• hold polluters to account
• protect homes and businesses from the devastating impact of flooding

Their expectations are clear, and we must strive to meet them. Ultimately, we will be judged on our performance and the outcomes we deliver. We must therefore find ways to enhance and improve it in everything we do.

In the year ahead this includes:

• supporting our people to be more integrated and able to work more effectively as one team
• increasing transparency
• improving the way we use data and information to inform our decisions

This is already happening with regards to our role in ensuring people and wildlife have clean and plentiful water. This will continue to be a huge focus for the organisation. It remains one of the biggest challenges we face but also one of the biggest gifts we can give to future generations. This plan highlights work we will do this year to improve water quality. I look forward to meeting many of our new recruits who will drive this work forward in the year ahead.

We will contribute to green growth and a sustainable future for the country through our continued work on:

• the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Programme
• waste reduction
• maintaining our strong performance on regulation

We can look back on 2023 to 2024 and be proud of what we have delivered. Through this business plan we can also look forward with a sense of optimism and determination. We know that if we can deliver it, we can achieve excellence as a leading environmental regulator. And more importantly make many people’s lives, and the places and environments in which they live, much better.

Alan Lovell, Chair

1 April 2024

3. Foreword from the Chief Executive

Our 2024 to 2025 business plan marks the next stage in our journey. We shall focus on:

• meeting the aspirations and standards the public hold for us
• expanding our work on water quality and waste management
• committing to challenging but realistic efficiency and savings targets

We start the year having achieved very good results in 2023 to 2024. This includes:

• protecting more homes from flooding
• delivering an excellent incident response
• cleaner healthier air (year-on-year reduction in pollutants)
• protecting people and the environment through effective regulation (97% compliance at permitted sites)

Our customer service improved too, as we met Freedom of Information deadlines and service standards for permitting.

We have delivered these improved results whilst managing one of the wettest winters on record.

Three years into the second flood asset capital programme, we have protected an additional 88,272 properties (101% of target) on top of more than 314,000 homes protected under the first 6-year programme. Over the last winter period, sadly almost 7,000 properties did flood (with over 240,000 properties protected) which underlines the on-going threat flooding poses to people’s lives and livelihoods.

I pay tribute to all our staff who worked tirelessly, often through weekends and holidays, to deliver an effective response to the weather and flooding we experienced last year.

As we look to 2024 to 2025, we will meet 2 major challenges. Firstly, to deliver a step change in our work on water quality. This follows the government’s approval to invest up to £53m in a new water inspection, enforcement, and data capability. This will ensure we can play a key part in delivering the government’s accelerated Plan for Water, assessing our progress and contribution against our targets and performance framework. We will need to work with all parties to move the dial on water quality and we are determined to succeed as a regulator in this domain.

Our second challenge will be to realise a major step forward on waste management. The coming year has many critical milestones as we deliver the government’s ambitious waste strategy. Core to success will be finding our voice as a confident regulator, which responds to the concerns of communities impacted by poor waste management and waste crime.

Our people are of course at the heart of what we do. In the year ahead we have set targets to improve diversity, building on our success in the last year. We want to introduce new talent schemes, particularly for under-represented groups, expand our work in sponsoring early career professionals, and sign the Armed Forces Covenant.

We know we can rely on our talented, passionate, and skilled staff to deliver for the environment and our communities in the year ahead.

Philip Duffy, Chief Executive and Accounting Officer

1 April 2024

4. Final year of our 5-year corporate plan – EA2025

2024 to 2025 will be the final year of our current 5-year corporate action plan – EA2025.

EA2025:

• reflects and connects with our people’s passion to protect and enhance the environment
• maps our varied and wide-reaching work to the ambition set out in the 25 Year Environment Plan (25YEP)

In the period of EA2025 the world came to grips with the Covid 19 global pandemic. For the Environment Agency, EA2025 helped us retain our sense of purpose and come through an enforced transformation on working practice. The pandemic also heightened the public’s awareness and appreciation of the environment and the places people live.

Our delivery of EA2025 has been tracked and published on GOV.UK in regular quarterly updates of our corporate scorecard. Whilst some of the measures have evolved over the period between 2020 to 2024, we can track our progress in delivering for the places and communities we serve. Our results in 2023 to 2024 are the latest in that series.

Looking ahead, we shall replace EA2025 with our new corporate action plan in 2025 when we will celebrate our 30th anniversary. We are focusing increasingly on the things we are uniquely placed and empowered to do to deliver against our long-term goals set out in EA2025. This focus aligns with:

• growing expectations of the public
• contributing to the delivery of the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP)
• other significant contributions we make across a range of government policy and environmental legislation, including net zero and levelling-up

This 2024 to 2025 business plan will help us focus on:

• leveraging our roles (regulator, adviser, operator, responder and research centre)
• the powers given to us by government (as part of our statutory duties and legal responsibilities) to deliver on and progress the ambition set out in our long-term goals

In renewing our corporate plan, we shall take the opportunity to ensure we provide clarity to our people, our partners, and stakeholders, those we regulate, and the public on:

• our purpose as an organisation and our vision for the future
• how we shall bring all the resources we have to bear in delivering against that vision

5. Our performance in 2023 to 2024: making a difference

The Environment Agency use a red, amber, green system to see how we are performing:

• green - we are performing at or above the target(s) set
• amber - we are falling slightly short of the target
• red - there are improvements to be made

This table shows the red, amber, green scores for the measures plus the actual and target figures.

5.1 Corporate scorecard 2023 to 2024

Measure title	Units	Q4 actual	Year end target	Year end forecast
We reduce the risk of flooding for more properties	Number of properties better protected	88,272	87,351	Green
The water environment is healthier and is a better place for people and wildlife	Kilometres of the water environment enhanced	2,520	2,130	Green
We have a first-class incident response capability - proportion of trained staff utilised in core incident roles	Percentage trained staff utilised in core incident roles	113%	96%	Green
We protect people and the environment through effective regulation	Percentage compliance of permitted sites	97%	97%	Green
We increase biodiversity and promote an environmental net gain by creating more and better habitats for the benefit of people and wildlife	Hectares of habitat created and restored	1,912	1,350	Green
We have the lowest possible lost time incident (LTI) frequency rate	LTI frequency rate per 100,000 hours	0.10	0.11	Green
We reduce the number of serious environmental incidents from permitted sites, activities and sources we regulate directly	Number of Cat 1 and 2 environmental incidents	142	less than 150	Green
We successfully influence planning decisions by local authorities	Percentage decision notices successfully influenced	97%	97%	Green
We reduce the number of high-risk illegal waste sites	Number of high-risk illegal waste sites	141	less than 151	Green
Net Zero (total carbon budget)	Tonnes of CO2e	269,339	less than 282,916	Green
By 2025 our air will be cleaner and healthier	4 out of 4 pollutants showing a reduction in emissions on the previous year	3 of 4	4 of 4	Amber
The proportion of our executive managers who are female	Percentage of executive manager workforce	45.7%	50%	Amber
We maintain our flood and coastal risk management assets at or above the target condition	Percentage of high-risk assets at target condition	92.6%	94.5%	Red
We deliver our Preparing for Climate Impacts Plan and Enabling UK Net Zero Plan to tackle the climate emergency	90% of actions on track	78%	90%	Red
The proportion of our staff who are from a black, Asian, and minority ethnic background	Percentage of workforce	6.1%	18%	Red
We manage our money effectively to deliver our outcomes	Percentage spend to budget	TBC	100%	TBC

6. Our priorities and focus for 2024 to 2025

In 2024 to 2025 we will do all we can to better enable our people to meet the challenges we face in the years ahead.

To do this means embarking on a journey of transformation. This is crucial if we are to secure the developments needed to improve our services to the public and to those we regulate.

A fundamental part of this journey will mean driving efficiencies and delivering better outcomes. In 2024 to 2025 we will focus on:

• developing and recruiting people with new skills
• applying new digital technology tools
• embracing a culture of innovation and agility
• providing clarity on priorities
• streamlining how we do things
• removing duplication
• speeding up decision making and action

Transformation will also underpin our drive to deliver efficiencies against our grant-in-aid and charges income. This will all mean we are better able to align our resources and effort to secure the best possible outcomes for people and the environment.

Our people are central to our future success. We will therefore continue to:

• prioritise their health, safety, and wellbeing
• provide opportunities for personal development and offer flexible working
• provide an inclusive and supportive working environment that reflects the diversity of the communities we serve

7. Focus areas for the year ahead

7.1 Water

Our focus on water will mean a significant uplift in resources for our work to improve water quality, and options to address water quantity. We will :

• hire our first new water regulators and begin training them, as we expand our water industry water quality regulation teams from 130 staff to 340 by the end of the year
• deliver 4,000 inspections of wastewater and storm installations, and we will publish our findings
• look at options to use near real time event duration monitoring data, when it becomes available, as a development from the new data capabilities to provide mapped data on storm overflow spills and flow to full treatment data, which are already in use by Area teams
• complete 4,000 agriculture outcomes and farm inspections
• invest an additional £5.8m in 2024 to 2025 in water industry enforcement activity, enabling us to effectively tackle the worst offenders and make full use of voluntary undertaking and variable monetary penalties to tackle serious environmental offending impacting water
• continue to drive water industry investment through Price Review 2024, including securing options to close the 5 billion litre-per-day gap between supply and demand, and ensuring that the water industry deliver on their legal obligations to improve the water environment
• work with all water abstractors to help them understand and secure their water resilience
• deliver government initiatives to identify new water resource options, enable more efficient water use and return more water to the environment
• produce comprehensive classifications for all bathing waters, incorporate new bathing water designations in our operational activities, and ensure action plans are in place to address risk of non-compliance
• deliver the requirements of the River Basin Management Plan cycle and maximise Water Framework Directive delivery to 2027
• increase our Water Environment Improvement Programme delivery to £14.5m through partnership-working, delivering outcomes on Water Framework Directive measures
• deliver the Environment Agency elements of the Plan for Water

7.2 Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Programme

In the year ahead we will:

• continue to deliver the government’s £5.6bn programme for flood protection and resilience including year 4 of our current six-year capital programme; the £200m flood and coastal innovation programme and the £25m natural flood management programme
• deliver the £100m Frequently Flooded Allowance to protect communities that have suffered repeated flooding, and the £75m Internal Drainage Boards fund to protect agricultural land and rural communities
• publish our next National Flood Risk Assessment (NaFRA2) - this will provide an up to date understanding of both current and future flood risk for rivers, the sea and surface water
• develop our long-term investment plans for future flood and coastal resilience in advance of the next spending review
• complete the renewal of our commercial frameworks and establish a new charter for working collaboratively with our suppliers
• develop a strategy for improving the performance and reliability of our flood and navigation assets
• deliver on our Category 1 responder role to deliver a flood warning service under the Civil Contingencies Act (2004)

7.3 Waste and resources regulation

We will work to support the government’s ambitions for waste reduction through:

• focusing on our compliance work on poor performing waste management operators and directing resources to sites presenting a high fire risk or risk of abandonment
• increasing our emphasis on ‘upstream’ interventions, undertaking waste classification, waste acceptance and producer responsibility checks to prevent harm - such as the handling and disposal of non-permitted waste and sulphate waste as landfill and deposit for recovery sites
• directing our response to waste crime on the greatest threat, risk and harm, using best practice in risk assessment - this will mean closing high-risk illegal sites, stopping illegal waste exports and the mis-description of waste
• strengthening our intelligence-led approach and our collaboration with partners to target effort on offending and criminality in the waste sector
• our Waste Regulatory Reforms Programme to develop a new delivery model for new duties and introduce the Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging - this is worth £1.2bn per annum to the UK’s Gross Domestic Product

7.4 Regulation

We will be a confident regulator and maintain our strong performance on regulatory activities, including:

• focusing on high-risk activity, including Control of Major Accidents Hazards (COMAH), landfill regulation and abandoned sites, hazardous waste, agriculture compliance, oil refineries, nuclear sites, and radioactive sources to minimise adverse impacts on the environment and communities
• using our regulatory and advisory roles to support the nuclear sector’s contribution to sustainable development by delivering regulation and advice across the civil and defence nuclear lifecycles - delivering the programme to prepare for the regulation of Advanced Nuclear Technologies (ANT), including fusion
• ensuring we have a sustainable and class-leading permitting system
• supporting climate resilience and environmental protection and development of decarbonisation – Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS), hydrogen, decarb ready, advising government, developing regulatory approaches to innovation, implementing relevant legislation
• spatial planning – influencing strategic planning to identify opportunities for improving environmental and climate resilience. This includes working in partnership with others to protect, create and restore wildlife rich habitats and support nature recovery. Identification of environmental limitations that may shape and inform development programmes, particularly around water quality and water scarcity.
• focusing on our service to customers, delivering permit reviews, reservoir permits, Environmental Permitting Regulation (EPR) permits, water industry permits, digitalisation and standardisation of low-risk permits. We will adopt the new triage approach to enforcement, ensuring it is timely, intelligence-led and target effort based on threat, risk, and harm.

7.5 Organisational transformation

We will modernise our services and working environment through:

• creating a new unit in the business - the Strategy, Transformation and Assurance Directorate - to deliver ‘do it once’ services, improve our IT-enabled transformation effort, raise standards in our offer to our staff and provide better assurance of compliance across the business
• identifying and targeting key functions such as permitting that can benefit from digitalisation and service revision, through which we will deliver better customer experience and improved operational efficiency
• progressing towards our high ambitions for our staff through keeping them safe, strengthening our culture, offering a new talent scheme, greater interchange, new governance and initiatives to improve representation of staff from minority ethnic backgrounds by 1.5 percentage points
• improving our employee offer through targeted skills development, attraction and recruitment actions, and a continuous focus on how we reward our people, all guided by our People Strategy
• maintaining our performance against the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) standards for Freedom of Information and advancing plans to proactively publish more information

7.6 Efficiencies and value for money

We will improve management of our finances and value for money by:

• delivering £15m efficiencies to fulfil our Spending Review commitment, whilst maintaining performance
• reprioritising £8m of spending towards front line water quality work, which will be delivered by efficiencies
• reviewing more of our fees and charges, to ensure that the true cost of services is met by those that use them and bring our charges into line with other government bodies
• establishing a robust commercial plan to make best use of our assets to deliver greater taxpayer value and improve maintenance of our assets wherever possible
• continuing our close collaboration with the National Audit Office (NAO) to improve our understanding of our asset base, with a view to removing remaining accounting qualifications and holding significantly improved technical data

7.7 Providing advice to government

We will deliver on our role as the government’s adviser on pollution and environmental risks by:

• reinforcing our nuclear programme, with dedicated focus on Sizewell C nuclear power station
• continuing our programme of managing emerging threats, including work with the Health and Safety Executive on the management of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS or ‘forever chemicals’), the implementation of our Methane Plan, and further advisory work on emerging technologies
• reviewing and revising our monitoring work for further opportunities to leverage digital technology to improve the insights and evidence it provides
• advising on, influencing, and implementing planning reforms and levelling up agenda through informing changes to the town and country planning regime and accelerated Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project delivery
• providing a strategic overview role on all sources of flood risk from rivers and the sea
• driving the government’s waste reform projects in partnership with Defra, to deliver a more circular economy and reduce waste crime

8. How we will know we are succeeding

Our 2024 to 2025 priorities, targets and corporate scorecard measures.

8.1 Incident response

We will prepare for, respond to and support recovery from high-risk flooding and environmental incidents including major incidents.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We will target 90% resilience in our capability to respond to incidents.

8.2 Capital programme

We will deliver the agreed capital programme for both the Environment Agency and Risk Management Authorities to better protect properties from flooding by 2027 and deliver wider environmental benefits.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We will target:

• a cumulative total of 114,000 properties better protected from flooding as part of the second programme of the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Capital Investment Programme (2021 to 2027)
• 80% on track / complete innovation actions delivered in flood and coastal resilience to adapt to a changing climate

8.3 Planning

We will influence local authority planning decisions and Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) to deliver good environmental outcomes.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We will target:

• 97% of local authority planning decisions that we successfully influence
• 97% of Development Consent Orders (DCOs) for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) that we successfully influence

8.4 Asset operation and maintenance

We will maintain our assets to ensure reliable operation and response.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We have a target of 94.5% of assets at required condition. The winter storms between 2023 and 2024 have had a significant impact on existing assets. While we will endeavour to repair and maintain our assets, the more likely outcome for 2024 to 2025 is 92%.

8.5 Compliance

We will ensure effective compliance with a focus on our statutory duties.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We will target:

• 97% compliance with environmental permits
• reducing the number of serious environmental incidents from permitted sites, activities, and sources we regulate directly to an annual limit of 150

8.6 Water

We will deliver the Environment Agency elements of the Plan for Water.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We will:

• conduct 4,000 water company compliance inspections
• target 90% of non-compliant water company sewage treatment works to be brought back into compliance
• target completing 4,000 agriculture outcomes and farm inspections

8.7 Waste

We will reduce the impact of regulated and illegal waste on the environment.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We will target at least 90 high-risk illegal waste sites (IWS). They will be ‘stopped’ which means either:

• there is subsequently no activity for a minimum of 28 days
• that site has been brought into compliance

8.8 Habitat restoration

We will deliver environmental enhancement and restoration where we have a statutory duty.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We will target creating or restoring 1,250 hectares of wildlife-rich habitat, delivering Environmental Net Gains to benefit people and wildlife.

8.9 Sustainability

We will deliver our corporate sustainability commitments to meet government targets.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We will:

• reduce our carbon emissions to 250,697 tonnes
• become a net zero organisation by 2045 to 2050

8.10 Transformation

As part of a wider transformation programme, we shall review and revise our end-to-end services and the use of digital technology to support our people to deliver.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We will target the equivalent of £15m savings in grant-in-aid and £8m savings in charges income.

8.11 People

Our people’s safety is our top priority. We also want people to be their best selves when working at the Environment Agency and strive to ensure our people reflect the diversity of the communities we serve.

Target and measure for 2024 to 2025

We will target:

• a 0.11 Lost Time Incident (LTI) frequency rate limit per 100,000 hours
• a rate of 50% of executive managers who are female, and 7.6% of staff from minority ethnic backgrounds

9. Our funding

The Environment Agency’s total budget for 2024 to 2025 is £2,086m. This is an increase of £125m compared to our £1,961m budget in 2023 to 2024 and includes:

• government approval to invest up to £53m to deliver the Plan for Water
• a £9m increase in water resources charges relating to Kielder Water in Northumberland (the largest man-made lake in Northern Europe)

As shown in the table, funding to deliver:

• our flood related outcomes is predominately received from government
• environment protection outcomes is predominately generated through our fees and charges

	Flood resource £m	Flood capital £m	Environment Protection resource £m	Environment Protection capital £m	Total - Flood and Environment Protection (capital and resource £m)
Grant in Aid	586	749	130	52	1517
Charges and other income	20	85	453	11	569
Total	606	834	583	63	2086

This budget has been allocated across the business to:

• maximise our ability to deliver as one organisation
• enable the delivery of our priorities set out in this business plan

We are committed to efficiencies as a public body. We will deliver £15m of efficiencies this financial year to fulfil our Spending Review commitment. We have also committed to provide an additional £8m from existing resources to fund the commitments set out in the Plan for Water. We aim to deliver these savings by efficiencies. As such a new corporate scorecard measure has been included to capture this commitment. 

Our budget will also change throughout 2024 to 2025 as we are expecting to receive £5.8m to fund water quality enforcement. Our charge income may also increase depending on the outcome of charge reviews in progress.

We are also looking to the future and will develop an over-arching funding strategy to prepare us for future years. This will include proposals such as:

• a commercial plan
• maximising cost-recovery
• work to a prioritised fees and charges programme
• gaining agreement to have greater flexibility in our funding

The aim is to enable us to be more agile and responsive to fast evolving priorities so we can deliver the expectations placed upon us.