Energy & Environment

Water companies face new civil penalties up to £250million

There has been widespread media coverage of the Environment Secretary's announcement that he will bring forward proposals to raise the civil penalty for water companies who pollute the environment by 1,000-fold - from £250,000 to up to £250 million.

Updated: Tue Oct 04 2022

Future Farming Podcast: Tenants, landlords and our new environmental schemes

In episode 9 of the Future Farming podcast, Defra's farming strategy lead, Briony Turner, talks to land use adviser Harry Greenfield of the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) and farm adviser Lynette Steel, of the Tenant Farmers Association (TFA) about new environmental schemes.

Updated: Wed Sep 21 2022

New research sheds light on marine biodiversity of South Sandwich Islands

Shaped by ice and fire, the volcanic South Sandwich Islands are a remote sub-Antarctic archipelago that have remained largely uninhabited since their discovery by polar explorers in the 18th century. In winter, sea ice extends northwards across the two hundred ...

Updated: Fri Aug 26 2022

Environmental Stewardship: an update

We recently wrote to everyone with Environmental Stewardship agreements to outline some changes that we plan to introduce in 2023. Rather than offering agreement holders an extension of a single year, we're offering extensions of 5 years. This change, shaped by feedback, gives greater certainty and clarity to people in existing agri-environment agreements. It also removes the burden of having to apply for an extension each year.

Updated: Thu Aug 25 2022

£100 million for frequently flooded communities

Funding will be targeted at eligible communities where 10 or more properties have flooded twice or more in the last 10 years, helping to both accelerate existing projects and deliver new ones.

Updated: Tue Jul 26 2022

Catching fishers' view of the future of Channel non-pressure stocks

In June MMO colleagues visited 21 ports stretching from Kent to Cornwall to speak with commercial fishers about their experiences of fishing for non-quota species (NQS, also known as non-pressure stocks) - and their aspirations for future management of these ...

Updated: Fri Jul 22 2022

Apply for the Sustainable Farming Incentive

The Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) is now open for applications via the Rural Payments service. Through the SFI, farmers will be paid for looking after the natural environment in the course of their farming. This initial offer will pay farmers for taking care of their soil or assessing the condition of moorland. In this post, we'll share more about the application process.

Updated: Thu Jul 21 2022

Soil health: a UK-wide discussion

In this post, we'll share a summary of the second meeting of the UK Agriculture Partnership (UKAP). It was held at the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise in Northern Ireland. The topic of the meeting was soil health.

Updated: Thu Jul 21 2022

A day in the life of a bigeye tuna: tales from the south atlantic

On 12th December 2018, at 7am, a fish tagging team began fishing on the tuna grounds within St Helena, with the goal of tagging a number of yellowfin and bigeye tuna. The team, including staff from St Helena Government, Stanford ...

Updated: Wed Jul 13 2022

Preparing your fishery for the summer

Spring and summer can trigger a range of problems for fisheries, and it's important to understand how to prepare and protect them. It's vital that anglers and fishery managers recognise the risks posed by warmer weather; remain vigilant for signs ...

Updated: Fri Jul 08 2022

I-VMS update 5

It's really encouraging that so many vessels across our English inshore have installed their onboard I-VMS devices and received the grant funding to re-imburse their costs, but we realise there is still much work to do. We have now hit ...

Updated: Thu Jul 07 2022

Emma Howard Boyd speech on finance, resilience, net zero and nature

Today there has been widespread coverage of warnings by Emma Howard Boyd, Chair of the Environment Agency and Interim Chair of the Green Finance Institute, of how widespread greenwashing is compromising efforts to prepare for climate impacts. Her comments have ...

Updated: Mon Jul 04 2022