Under the Environment Act 2021 the government was legally obliged to publish a set of environmental targets by 31 October 2022. These targets could be in respect of any matter relating to natural environment or people’s enjoyment of the environment, with particular focus on air quality, water, biodiversity and resource efficiency and waste reduction.

On 28 October, just 3 days before the statutory deadline for publication, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Thérèse Coffey, confirmed the government was not going to meet the deadline.

The Office for Environmental Protection, the new regulator under the Environment Act 2021, wrote to the Secretary of State on 28 October stating that the government’s failure undermined the new legislative framework, delayed measures to drive environmental improvement and threatened knock-on delays to the current 31 January 2023 deadline for the first review of the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan.

Whilst the OEP noted its role was to hold the government accountable and use enforcement powers as necessary, it granted the government a temporary reprieve until the end of the calendar year in view of the particularly challenging political circumstances over the last few months. The OEP noted that more formal action at this stage could risk detracting from the core purposes of getting the right targets in place at the earliest possible opportunity but expressed concern that this was not the only statutory deadline that had been missed by the government, citing a number of other examples.

If the government misses the extended deadline of 31 December 2022 we may see our newest environmental regulator flex its muscles.

Written by Ian Truman.