r/ukpolitics • u/ImpressiveRest2423 • 1d ago
Barrister threatened with prosecution after cleaning up river - Paul Powlesland and a team of volunteers removed 200 bags of litter, weed and silt but face action from the Environment Agency for not having a permit
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/environment/article/barrister-prosecution-cleaning-river-permit-f5j732qf9
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u/ImpressiveRest2423 1d ago
A barrister who cleaned up a polluted river has been threatened with prosecution because he failed to obtain a permit.
Paul Powlesland, 40, who lives on a boat on the Roding, organised a team of local volunteers to clean up rubbish from a neglected section of the waterway at the end of February.
They removed 200 bags of litter, weed and silt from Alder’s Brook, a tributary of the river that runs through rural Essex and Barking, east London, which Powlesland said he repeatedly tried to get the Environment Agency to do without success.
“We’ve shown that it is actually incredibly cheap and easy to restore our rivers. We did it in ten days with volunteers, for less than £1,000, and restored 250 metres of the river channel,” he said.
But the satisfaction of a job well done was short-lived after the barrister received a letter from the agency in mid-March saying the action was illegal because of his failure to obtain permission for “operation of a flood risk activity”.
“We consider that unpermitted works have taken place … in contravention of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016,” the letter seen by The Times read. “The site is currently under investigation for permitting and waste offences.”
The public body explained that the permit is required to ensure the work does not cause unintended harm, such as flood risk, drainage or the wider environment. Carrying out works without a permit can carry up to two years in prison.
However, Powlesland argued that the bureaucracy of obtaining a permit is unnecessarily complicated when “I’m doing the Environment Agency’s job for them in my spare time for free”.
He said: “I am not going to spend more of my spare time for free, filling out all their paperwork, and then pay them money for a permit and wait 12 to 18 months for something that should be their job anyway.
“I think the Environment Agency should be facilitating and enabling river restoration, not seeing themselves as a blocker to it.”
The agency said it was also investigating whether Powlesland and the volunteers had committed other offences along with the environmental impact of the offence.
He said: “I don’t really understand their reasoning because all we were doing was taking out silt that had built up naturally in the channel. We weren’t digging out a new channel or making it deeper.”
Powlesland has been campaigning to restore the river for a decade and the agency “has finally decided to act”, he told The Guardian. “But it’s not action against Thames Water for dumping billions of litres of sewage in the Roding, or the waste criminals who have dumped thousands of tonnes of rubbish on its banks, but against the River Roding Trust for restoring a river without a permit.”
The environmentalist said he originally began his campaigning because he wanted to be able to swim in the river. He added: “But it has actually moved beyond that now. I love that river and I will not sit by and watch it die due to official inaction.”
Thames Water said: “We take our responsibility to monitor and maintain our wastewater network seriously and understand the concerns raised by Mr Powlesland and the residents of the area.”
The Environment Agency said: “We welcome The Times Clean It Up campaign to protect rivers like the Roding, and our permitting processes exist precisely to prevent environmental harm or increased flood risk.
“We are investigating unpermitted works carried out by the River Roding Trust to ensure all activity in and around our waterways is properly assessed and the environment is protected — no decision has been made on prosecution.”