Cuts hit factory pollution checks

The control of pollution from Britain's most dangerous factories and waste tips is in danger of "falling to pieces" because of government cuts.

Inspections by the Government's official watchdog are falling rapidly; staff often fail to turn up to pollution incidents on the same day as they occur; and not enough is being done to prevent a "rising tide" of fly-tipping.

The Environment Agency, whose responsibilities include flood control, fishing and recreation as well as regulating pollution, is being starved of funds by Margaret Beckett's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Pollution control has suffered most, in spite of an increased workload caused by EU directives.

The crisis is the result of parsimony and discrimination within Whitehall. Defra is being squeezed by the Treasury to punish it for the enormous sums spent by its predecessor, the Ministry of Agriculture, on combating the foot and mouth epidemic two years ago.

Defra's environmental division is, in turn, squeezing the Environment Agency, with pollution control absorbing the bulk of the cuts. The result, says the agency's finance director, Nigel Reader, is that its environmental protection work is facing a "funding gap" of £12m.

An investigation by Ends, Britain's leading pollution control journal, has established that the number of inspections of potential polluters carried out by the agency has fallen by a third since it was founded in the mid-1990s. Half of the fall occurred in 2001 alone.

The Environment Agency is able to raise funds for inspections by charging the firms it regulates for them. But it is having still more difficulty in pursuing other activities, such as attending pollution incidents, monitoring air and water quality, and taking polluters to court. Officials are particularly worried about an explosion of fly-tipping as a result of new EU directives to phase out landfill sites.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, yesterday called on the Government to provide more funding. He described the slump in inspections as "deeply concerning'' as they are "one of the best ways we have of placing an environmental check on pollution''.