Written evidence from the Environment Agency (NIT0063)

Baroness Sheehan

Chair, Environment & Climate Change Committee

House of Lords

SW1A 0PW

Sent via email

Date: 25 June 2026

Dear Baroness Sheehan,

Nitrogen inquiry

Thank you for inviting us to give oral evidence to the Environment and Climate Change Committee in May. We were grateful to have the opportunity to update the committee on the Environment Agency's work in this area and to assist with your inquiry.

During our evidence session, we committed to writing to the committee with further information on the following topics:

i)  Our joint working with Ofwat with regards to the Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP), including the actions that water companies must take to comply with environmental regulations such as the Water Framework Directive.

ii)  Trends in ammonia loads in sewage effluent and trends in ammonia levels calculated at our Harmonised Monitoring Scheme sites since the 1990s.

ii) Figures around wastewater sites and facilities, in order to contextualise the Environment Agency's water industry site inspection figures for 2024/25

iv)  Providing a copy of the report published by the Environment Agency’s Chief

Scientists Group on the evidence for multiple benefits of nature-based solutions.

v)  The number of poultry farms in the River Wye area covered by Environmental Permitting Regulations.

This additional information can be found in an Annex at the end of this letter below. Please don't hesitate to get in touch with us if you have any follow-up questions.

Yours sincerely

Helen Wakeham

Director for Water, Environment Agency

Annex

i)  Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP)

1.    Water companies must ensure they comply with a range of statutory and regulatory requirements when carrying out their activities. Funding and investment for these requirements is agreed through Ofwat’s 5 yearly Price Review process.

2.    The Environment Agency provides advice to Ofwat and the government on legal and regulatory requirements (SPS, Water industry strategic environmental requirements (WISER)) and supports water companies in identifying measures to be included in the company 5 year business plans, through the Water Industry National Environment Programme (WINEP), Water Resource Management Plans and Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans.

3.    The WINEP has been a successful part of water industry planning since privatisation paving the way for significant improvements in water industry performance, the environment and customer services. It enables water companies to identify the actions they need to complete to comply with their environmental legislative requirements that apply to England.

4.    The overarching process for designing, developing, and delivering the WINEP is set out in the Environment Agency’s WINEP methodology. Ofwat were part of PR24 WINEP design group and played a key role in shaping the methodology.

The WINEP process is divided into 6 stages. It starts with consideration of the legislative framework and related ministerial and UK government steers and ends with the reporting of successful outcomes by water companies to show they have delivered environmental improvements.

Fig 1. WINEP methodology stages

5.    The methodology is supported by additional technical documents including WINEP driver guidance, options development guidance and option assessment guidance:

-  WINEP driver guidance – sets out how environmental legislation and related UK government priorities should be translated into WINEP actions.

-  WINEP options development guidance – sets out the process water companies are expected to follow to identify the best value WINEP option to achieve the WINEP requirements and contribute to the WINEP wider environmental outcomes.

-  WINEP options assessment guidance – sets out how the Environment Agency assesses whether the options development guidance has been followed by water companies to ensure the WINEP requirements and wider environmental outcomes can be achieved.

6.    Ofwat include efficient costs for the WINEP as part of its final determination of prices. It also works with the Environment Agency on the monitoring and reporting of water company delivery. Completion of the actions by companies is tracked through the Environment Agency’s environmental performance assessment and Ofwat’s annual performance reporting.

7.    Both the EA and Ofwat have a role in terms of setting expectations, monitoring delivery and intervening with respect to potential and/or actual non-delivery using their relevant regulatory tool(s). WINEP is not in itself a statutory requirement, but failure to complete WINEP actions may indicate that a water company is not complying with a legal obligation(s), enforceable by the Environment Agency (EA) and/or Ofwat. Where appropriate, detailed WINEP requirements are included and enforced through the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 (EPR) permits and water resource licences.

8.    Ofwat’s cost-outcomes package provides a financial incentive for companies to deliver the work they have committed to deliver in their business plans. In addition, if Ofwat is satisfied that non-delivery of WINEP is evidence that a company is not compliant with or is likely to become non-compliant with a legal obligation that Ofwat enforces then its duty to enforce is engaged.

9.    The current WINEP included in Ofwat’s PR24 (2025-2030) final determination was published by the Environment Agency in January this year. The programme contains over 20,000 actions identified as (i) improvement, (ii) prevent deterioration, (iii) investigations and/or, (iv) monitoring. Due to the nature of these actions, water companies are required to complete the actions by various dates in line with statutory requirements. For WINEP in AMP8, the majority of actions are required throughout 2025 – 2030, with a significant number due by 2027 and most due by 2030. Where appropriate delivery deadlines can also change via the EA's alterations process. Over 95% of the actions within the WINEP are contributing to a statutory requirement.

10.    The WINEP covers water company improvements in the following areas:

·  Water quality

·  Bioresources (sludge)

·  Biodiversity and nature recovery

·  Flood

·  Water resources – ensuring water companies abstract sustainably.

11.    A summary of some of the expected outcomes from the WINEP and some specific case studies are also included on the Water Hub webpage.

ii)  Ammonia trends

12.    The graph below combines trends in ammonia and orthophosphate loads in sewage effluent (calculated every five years, taken from the Defra 25 year plan B1c indicator) with trends in ammonia and orthophosphate monitored at our Harmonised Monitoring Scheme sites (calculated annually taken from supporting information for the Defra 25 year plan B3 indicator:              State of the water environment: long-term trends in river quality in England: 2024 - GOV.UK)

iii)  Water industry figures

13.    The assets for the combined 9 English Water and Sewage Companies (WaSCs):

Number of permitted Wastewater Treatment Works (WwTW) numeric discharges = 3,527

Number of permitted WwTW descriptive assets = 1960

Number of permitted Pumping Stations = 6,542

Number of Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) = 13,348

*These are CSOs on the sewer network (including those on Pumping Stations on the network) and includes any overflow on the inlet of the STW.

Total number of water company wastewater permitted discharges = 25,377

N.B. there may be several permitted discharges at a site. Inspections would cover all discharges at a site during a single visit.

14.    The Environment Agency undertook 4626 site inspections in 2024/25. Taking account of multiple discharges being inspected in a single site visit means approximately 25% of the total number of wastewater sites were inspected in 2024/25.

iv)  EA report on nature-based solutions

15.    The Environment Agency’s Chief Scientist Group has published its report on gov.uk here: Multiple benefits of nature-based solutions: an evidence synthesis - GOV.UK,

v)  Poultry farms in the River Wye area and Environmental Permitting Regulations

16.    There are an estimated 227 poultry farms in the River Wye according to Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) data. The Environment Agency only permits those farms which exceed a legal threshold of 40,000 bird places. There are 82 permitted farms in the River Wye catchment, and they account for 92% of the poultry reared in the catchment.

25/06/2025