Robert Forrester has backed calls for former chief executive Sir James Bevan to be stripped of his knighthood.
Regulators at the Environment Agency turned a blind eye to water companies dumping sewage, a whistleblower has told LBC.
Robert Forrester, a former Environment Agency employee who for years secretly documented the failings, has joined calls for former chief executive Sir James Bevan to be stripped of his knighthood.
Mr Forrester told LBC’s Tom Swarbrick prior to Sir James taking over leadership, “we’d have a pretty good regulatory process, investigate most incidents, attend them, have the good prosecution deterrence effect”.
However, he said “that started to erode away”, explaining that attendance started to drop off and processes were put in place that bypassed regulation.
He said: “So prosecutions were getting dropped. Monitoring was cut in half as officers would see discouragement from going out on site and encouragement to give leeway to the water companies.”
Read more: Thames Water creditors pledge £3.4bn of new equity in improved rescue bid
Picture:
Alamy
Tom questioned who was discouraging officers from investigations, to which Mr Forrester claimed: “It was immediate management, no doubt drip-fed through from senior leadership.”
He recalled: “We’re in a position where water companies would ring their incidents in several hours after it happened. So, therefore, management would say it’s not much point going out now the evidence is gone.”
Mr Forrester said officers would sometimes ignore management and go out on site anyway.
On one occasion, he went to an incident where a storm lagoon from a sewage treatment works had overtopped into a site of specific scientific interest.
He said: “So this was bank to bank of a large river of sewage pollution for about somewhere near three-quarters of a kilometre.
“We got told by the water company that this had been going on for two days, that everything was fine.”
He took samples and went back to the office, and was told to wait for the water company report.
“When that came in, I got given sample analysis on a post IT note. Literally just numbers written on a post it note.” he said.
“I was told that was good enough to downgrade it. Don’t bother with the evidence you’ve collected.”
He added: “There was certainly negligence in reporting to us. I think it was either two or three days before they rang it into us. They were trying to let it all settle down. Immediately prior to 2015, you’re looking at straight to prosecution for that.”
Mr Forrester said there was no pressure on the water companies to self-report on time.
“I’ve not known any enforcement action be taken against the water company for delaying their report,” he said.
Mr Forrester speculated that there could be “some sort of collusion” or working in partnership.
“There seemed to be vested interests at the top to keep the water companies happy, to keep the bosses happy, maybe for future employment, maybe for financial incentives. But there was no logical reason to frontline officers why it was happening.”
He backed calls for Sir James to lose his knighthood, and told LBC: “This almost wasn’t just incompetence, this was managed decline and a managed deprioritization of water.”
Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds also backed the move, telling LBC stripping Sir James of the gong should be “seriously considered”.
“There has been some really bad practice both in water companies, and we’ve seen poor leadership in our regulators.
“The Environment Agency is under new leadership. It’s horrific what’s been happening; we’ve had record levels of pollution in our waterways,” she said.
Sir James ran the agency from 2015 until March 2023. During his tenure, there was a reduction in water quality monitoring, and he has been accused of gagging staff from speaking out.
His track record was scrutinised in the Channel 4 docuseries Dirty Water, which depicted Sir James praising the practice of “operator self-monitoring”, which means water companies could ‘mark their own homework’.
A spokesman for Welsh Water said: “We appointed Sir James Bevan as a non-executive director in February 2025 following a rigorous search and appointment process.
“The Channel 4 programme is a television drama based on historical events relating to regulatory matters in England. Some dialogue, characters and scenes have been ‘recreated’ for the purposes of dramatisation. The portrayal of Sir James Bevan does not reflect the experience of the board since his appointment.”
LBC has contacted Sir James through Welsh Water for comment.
