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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 24 January 2024 to Question 9694 on River Mersey: Pollution, how many of the 56 pollution discharges in the River Mersey resulted in action being taken in line with the Environment Agency’s Enforcement and Sanctions policy.

Following the 56 pollution discharges into the River Mersey, in line with its enforcement and sanctions policy, the Environment Agency has taken action 24 times. Five pollution occurrences resulted in warning letters, 17 resulted in site warnings and two instances resulted in advice and guidance being issued.

After initial enquiries, the Environment Agency took no further action in 12 instances where no offence was deemed to have been committed, in eight instances that had no impact on water quality and in two instances where, following its enforcement and sanctions policy, further action was deemed not to be in the public interest.

There were 10 instances where a polluter could not be identified, so further action could not be taken.