EA waste over £500,000 - No licence

No licence

The subsequent non-appearance of the licence coupled to the Environment Agency's unwillingness to communicate anything, prompted the Earls to ask their local MP to inquire about the matter. The way he was treated by the Environment Agency prompted him to ask questions from the floor of The House of Commons.

The morning of the day after the question, a senior manager at the Environment Agency telephoned the Earls and warned 'if you involve an MP in this we'll make sure you go to the end of the queue'—charming.

The agreed time extensions to the North Mill application expired, and not being in receipt of a yes or a no on the licence the Earls lodged an appeal to The Planning Inspectorate for non-determination—which legally freezes the entire process (well, it's supposed to....) and the decision goes to H.M. Planning Inspectorate.

Not legal

Undaunted and determined, the Environment Agency then arbitrarily awarded a licence to Weaver's Mill (that had applied months after North Mill's application) and then said they were refusing a licence to North Mill because there 'wasn't any water available', neither of which they were legally mandated to do in any way, shape or form.

The Earls then applied for Judicial Review (a process with about a 5% success rate on past applications) and took the Environment Agency to the High Court—where the Environment Agency lost, their barristers admitted illegal actions and the Environment Agency were subjected to full legal costs and conditions were imposed on them regarding any further allocation of water resources at the Avoncliff.

Withheld information

It is of note that the Environment Agency successfully withheld pivotal information under Freedom of Information for over 18 months which would have made the Judicial Review even more of a disaster for them than it already was—and were criticized in uncompromising terms in an investigation by The Information Commissioner's Office.

It turned out that the North Mill application had indeed been properly and successfully determined by Environment Agency officials in the Earl's favour and that those documents relating to this fact had been hidden by certain other Environment Agency officials.

There is a recurring theme in all this—in that it would appear that the Environment Agency believe that rules are for other people and that the law doesn't apply to them.

More public money

Needless to say things have not changed (as of July 2012) and it certainly seems very likely that the Environment Agency will be spending much more public money employing barristers and using their well provisioned PR department to defend the extraordinarily arbitrary, wilful and destructive activities of their officials.

To date it has been independently estimated that The Environment Agency have spent well in excess of £500,000 of public money on this mess, and they are set to add considerably to that figure.

This isn't over yet

We welcome any information about other water power schemes involving the Environment Agency which have gone badly wrong—we already know of two more that bear striking similarities to this case.