Six Pump Court barristers involved in first OEP investigation and service of Decision Notices

Stephen Hockman KC, Charles Morgan and Nicholas Ostrowski have been advising the Office for Environmental Protection in the course of their first ever investigation.

The OEP is an independent non-departmental body established by s.21 Environment Act 2021 to protect and improve the environment by holding government and other public bodies to account following the UK leaving the EU. The OEP’s investigation, launched over two and a half years ago, considered the extent to which there have been failures to comply with environmental law by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Environment Agency and Ofwat in respect of the regulation of network combined sewer overflows through which untreated sewage is discharged into watercourses.

The OEP has recently issued Decision Notices, for the first time since it was created in 2022, which have found that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Environment Agency and Ofwat all failed to comply with environmental law.

The OEP has also sent Decision Notices to all three public authorities under s.36 Environment Act 2021 setting out the ways in which all the public authorities have failed to comply with environmental law and setting out the ways in which the breach of environmental law must be remedied.

More information about the OEP’s investigation and Decision Notices can be found here.