Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of the Environment Agency's decision to introduce charge funded regulation.

The Environment Agency’s (EA) decision to introduce charge-funded regulation is enabled by the Water (Special Measures) Act, which allows the EA to recover the full costs of a broader range of enforcement activities from water companies.

This approach is grounded in the polluter-pays principle and is intended to ensure that those responsible for environmental harm meet the costs associated with addressing it.

Allowing the EA to recover these costs provides a more sustainable and transparent basis for funding its regulatory and enforcement work. This includes activities such as undertaking prosecutions and civil sanctions, responding to pollution incidents, revoking permits where necessary, and meeting future enforcement needs.

The Government believes that increasing cost recovery in this way helps ensure that regulation of the water sector is both robust and properly resourced, supporting stronger environmental protections and more effective oversight.