Enforcement and Prosecution Policy

Natural Resources Wales (NRW) is reviewing its Enforcement and Sanctions Policy (ESP), which will make how it tackles environmental crime in all its forms easier to understand and more accessible to the public.

Our current policy on Enforcement and Prosecution was approved and published in March 2013. We recently established an internal expert group, including legal representatives, to run a review of this policy and its associated guidance.

Our revised ESP does not change our approach to enforcement. Principally, we engage with operators, individuals, and businesses, to educate and enable compliance or prevent harm; to put the environment first and to integrate good environmental practices into normal working methods.

Our review of this policy and associated guidance considers legislative changes for our core purpose, our new organisational structures, clarity on the use of civil sanctions (where we have those powers) and accessibility requirements, for publishing as a series of webpages.

Following the conclusion of the public consultation exercise we will assess and publish all relevant and valid consultation responses.

Subject to approval by internal governance at Enforcement Subgroup and Regulatory Business Board, our revised Enforcement and Prosecution Policy will then be published on our website.

We received 26 responses to the consultation from a wide range of people and companies including representatives of Angling clubs, rivers trusts, woodland trusts, a community councillor and community groups, Charites, The Farmers Union of Wales, RSPB Cymru, South Wales Fire and Rescue Service and a number of Ltd Companies.

Overall, the respondents supported the new Enforcement and Sanctions Policy and wanted to see NRW take enforcement action against environmental crime, and in particular river pollution, illegal fishing, damage to nature and fly tipping.

Many of the responses were concerned with our incident attendance and response siting particular instances where they had first-hand knowledge or were dissatisfied with NRW actions in that individual case.

Some responders whilst critical of NRW acknowledged that NRW is faced with a resource shortage / lack of boots on ground and that there was little point in having a ESP without the staff or resource to implement it.

The comments raised about resource and incident response whilst not forming part of this consultation will be fed back to our regulatory business board and may be used in future discussions with WG.

We intend to:

Publish the revised ESP

Review each response and provide a detailed report for our Regulatory business board

Share the responses with the relevant parts of the business i.e. Incident response

The following redacted document (annex 1) captures the themes of the responses we received in relation to this consultation.