Home > Publications > Selected cases — Parliamentary > Selected Cases and Summaries of Completed Investigations - October 1998 - March 1999 > Environment Agency
Sixth Report Session 1998-99
Volume 2
OCTOBER 1998 - MARCH 1999
The full report of selected cases
Summary of other investigations completed
ENVIROMENT AGENCY
Failure to provide an explanation of legislation, and inconsistent treatment of applications to introduce fish to inland waters
The Ombudsman upheld a complaint that the National Rivers Authority and their successor body, the Environment Agency, had failed to provide Mr K with an adequate explanation of the legislative basis under which they had attached conditions to consents granted by them under Thames region fisheries bylaws for him to remove fish from inland waters using a net. The Ombudsman also criticised the explanation the Environment Agency had given Mr K when he had queried what he saw as inconsistency between decisions they had made in relation to two applications from him for consents to introduce fish into inland waters. The Environment Agency apologised for the inadequate explanations given, agreed to make Mr K an ex gratia payment of £50 for the inconvenience caused, and agreed to review the two decisions and provide him with an explanation of the outcome of that review.
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The grant of a licence to a company to abstract water, and poor handling of a complaint about it
Company X applied to the National Rivers Authority (NRA) for a consent order to investigate a ground water source. Their agents conducted test pumping in May 1995 and monitored the effect at Mr B's well without his permission or knowledge. They found that the water level there remained constant throughout. However, the minutes of a meeting of company X's liaison committee recorded (wrongly) that the level at the well had dropped by a metre; that error was not cleared up until 27 October. Mr B complained to NRA that they had unquestioningly relied on the agents' test results which had conflicted with the information given to the liaison committee; he also argued that NRA should arrange for further testing in his presence and that of their representative. He also complained to NRA that they had failed to reply to his letters and he again asked NRA to conduct further testing; he repeated that request on 8 September. In August he had asked NRA to confirm that company X were not illegally abstracting water; and on 10 October he told NRA that company X had publicly admitted illegal abstraction. Company X said they had stopped their abstraction on 12 October, but it was not until 16 November that NRA confirmed that. Company X formally applied for an abstraction licence on 19 October. NRA prepared a full report in November including detailing and commenting on all Mr B's objections, and decided to grant company X a water abstraction licence on 3 January 1996. The Ombudsman found that NRA had not been maladministrative in granting the licence but he criticised NRA's failure to check that their survey instructions had been followed, and in particular their failure to take test readings at monitored sites in accordance with their own recommended good practice. The Environment Agency (as NRA's successor) agreed to commission an independent review by a hydrogeological consultant of Mr B's choice of all the data available to the Environment Agency, the results to be reported simultaneously to Mr B and themselves.
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