Exclusive: Whistleblower figures show large rise in ‘serious’ to ‘minor’ downgrades based on water company evidence
Environment Agency (EA) staff have downgraded thousands of serious pollution incidents by water companies in England without visiting to investigate, data unearthed by freedom of information (FoI) requests suggests.
The figures were obtained by Robert Forrester, a whistleblower who left the agency in January and has spent nine years shining a light on the state of the water industry. His identity was revealed in the Channel 4 docudrama Dirty Business this week, and he has vowed to carry on fighting to expose the truth.
The data shows 2,778 serious pollution incidents by water companies were reported in 2024. Of these, 2,735 (98%) were downgraded to minor incidents by officials, FoI data shows. Officers only attended 496 of these before downgrading the pollution event; the rest were deemed minor events on water company evidence alone, the data suggests.
This represents nearly a 1,500% increase on the 174 downgrades in 2021, of which 60 were attended.
