All the 'pollution incidents' not visited immediately on Yorkshire waterways

A number of water pollution incidents went unvisited
-Credit: (Image: PA Archive/PA Images)


The Environment Agency is not visiting hundreds of water pollution incidents across Yorkshire immediately, show new figures.

According to a Freedom of Information request by RADAR, the Environment Agency is also attending fewer incidents across all of England than before the pandemic. They show that hundreds of incidents have not been visited immediately, which means they were not attended within two hours of coming in, or within four hours outside of a normal working day.

This is the definition set by the Environment Agency itself. Here are the number of incidents reported in Yorkshire, along with how many were not attended.

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"The statistics also include the nature of the incidents, with a category one incident being the most serious, category two incidents which have a "significant" impact, with the rest at category three, having a "minor or minimal" impact.

These incidents took place between 2018 and 2023

  • Barnsley: 212 incidents, 53 visited immediately, 159 not visited immediately including four category twos

  • Bradford: 507 incidents, 138 visited immediately, 369 not visited immediately including one category one and five category twos

  • Calderdale: 222 incidents, 47 visited immediately, 175 not visited immediately including five category twos

  • Doncaster: 179 incidents, 57 visited immediately, 122 not visited immediately

  • East Riding of Yorkshire: 372 incidents, 121 visited immediately, 251 not visited immediately including five category twos

  • Hull: 31 incidents, 11 visited immediately, 20 not visited immediately

  • Kirklees: 387 incidents, 129 visited immediately, 256 not visited immediately including nine category twos

  • Leeds: 420 incidents, 103 visited immediately, 317 not visited immediately including three category ones and four category twos

  • North Yorkshire: 1,097 incidents, 299 visited immediately, 798 not visited immediately including two category ones and ten category twos

  • Rotherham: 198 incidents, 74 visited immediately, 124 not visited immediately, including three category twos

  • Sheffield: 354 incidents, 94 visited immediately, 260 not visited immediately including four category twos

  • Wakefield: 235 incidents, 61 visited immediately, 174 not visited immediately including one category one and four category twos

  • York: 176 incidents, 55 visited immediately, 121 not visited immediately including three category twos

It is unclear in the statistics whether these incidents were checked at a later date, or not at all.

According to the Environment Agency, there are many reasons for not visiting pollution incidents straight away including the fact that some incidents can be handled remotely or through emergency services. Some reports also come through some time after an incident has taken place.

Nationally, the agency attended 36% and 34% of incidents within the timeframe in 2018 and 2019 respectively. This dropped to 20% in 2020, only climbing back to 27% last year.

An Environment Agency spokesperson said: "We assess and record every incident report we receive – between 70,000 and 100,000 a year. We respond to every incident and always attend those where there is a significant risk."

Greenpeace policy director Dr Doug Parr said there was an urgent need for water regulators to be given "more staff, more money and more power", but that the last Government did not invest in regulation. He said a fall in standards in the water industry was matched by "a decline in the bodies enforcing those standards".

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Water companies were responsible for more than 2,300 incidents in 2023. A spokesperson for industry body Water UK said: "No pollution incident is ever acceptable and this is why water companies have proposed to invest £105 billion – a near-doubling of current levels – to upgrade our network. We need Ofwat to approve our plans in full so we can get on with it."

The Environment Agency also said: "We take our responsibility to protect the environment very seriously and will always pursue and prosecute companies that are deliberately obstructive or misleading.

"While criminal prosecutions can be lengthy processes, since 2015 we have concluded 63 prosecutions against water companies securing fines of over £151 million."

"Last week’s Water (Special Measures) Bill will make it easier for us to take enforcement action and build on our ongoing work to deliver our biggest transformation in the way we regulate," a spokesperson added.

The agency said it is recruiting more staff, increasing compliance checks and water company inspections, and visiting more water pollution incidents.