Britain's environmental protection watchdog said on Tuesday it had identified possible failures to comply with environmental law in relation to the regulation of combined sewer overflows, including by the government's environment department.
The Office for Environmental Protection said it believed the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, water regulator Ofwat and the government's Environment Agency may all have misinterpreted key points of law.
The OEP said the three public authorities had been notified and that they had two months to respond and set out proposed measures to address the issues. "Where we interpret the law to mean that untreated sewage discharges should generally be allowed only in exceptional circumstances ... it appears that the public authorities may have interpreted the law differently," OEP Chief Regulatory Officer Helen Venn said in a statement.
"The guidance provided by government to regulators, and the permitting regime they put in place for the water companies, possibly allow untreated sewage discharges to occur more regularly than intended by the law without risk of sanction." The OEP said it had launched a probe in June last year after receiving a complaint alleging failures to comply with legal duties over the monitoring and enforcement of water companies' sewage management.
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