Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 25
25
Accepted
The Agency also highlighted its recent achievement in securing fines of £1.5 million against a...
Recommendation
The Agency also highlighted its recent achievement in securing fines of £1.5 million against a large waste company for waste export illegalities.89 The Agency has been keen to publicise this record fine for waste export breaches that the judge called “reckless, bordering on deliberate”. However, despite the company having been fined £350,000 for similar offences only two years earlier, the Agency was able to stop less than half of the shipment concerned. 16 containers were stopped but 26 containers had already left port under rolling contracts to send waste to India and Indonesia.90 Combatting fly-tipping locally
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and the Environment Agency provided a written response to the committee on November 30th. HMRC is also collaborating with the agency to produce an estimate of the scale of illegal exports and the potential losses to the exchequer that considers all available data whilst identifying data gaps.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
6. PAC recommendation: The Agency should write to us within six weeks setting out what actions would be required to enable it to understand the true scale of illegal waste exports and what further action it might take to prevent them. 6.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation Recommendation implemented 6.2 A response has been provided to the Committee by Sir James Bevan, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, sent to the committee on the 30th of November. 6.3 HMRC is also collaborating with the agency to produce an estimate of the scale of illegal exports and the potential losses to the exchequer that considers all available data whilst identifying data gaps.