DEFRA consider that protecting our natural environment is a government priority. Strengthening regulations that enable polluters to be held to account is one piece of the wider plan in reducing pollution to protect biodiversity and the ecology of our rivers and seas.

The government wants to strengthen the abilities of the Environment Agency (EA) to issue
monetary penalties for environmental offences in England, and to raise the cap for such
penalties. This will involve:

• increasing the overall cap for variable monetary penalties in the Environmental Civil
  Sanctions (England) Order 2010 from its current amount of £250,000
• introducing powers to issue variable monetary penalties for breaches of
  environmental permits into the Environmental Permitting Regulations.
  The options for change to the cap for consultation are to raise the cap to £25 million, to
  £250 million or to have no cap at all with unlimited penalties.

The EA calculates variable monetary penalties in accordance with the Sentencing Council
Guidelines, which set out different levels of penalty according to the seriousness of the
offence and with consideration of the financial circumstances of the offender.

This consultation seeks input on changes for the variable monetary penalty cap and
introduce variable monetary penalties into the Environmental Permitting Regulations to
increase the EA’s ability to take action on environmental offences.

Source: Strengthening environmental civil sanctions – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)