100 !!

Well, here we are  4 years later... if somebody'd told me in 2009 that I'd write 100+ blog posts (some didn't see the light of day for various reasons) about the EA and Avoncliff over that time - I would have laughed in their face.

But here we are - and it's still a mess.

There are some things that are clear though.

EA managers and lawyers broke the law - several times. And it would seem that they simply do not learn from experience since they have "limitless" public funds to hose around to try and outspend any challenger to their interpretation of their own "authority" - bugger statutory duty, common law and especially The Civil Servants Code of Conduct....

A couple of recent events caught my eye - first there was this one - News International phone hacking  superficially seems unrelated until you get to the actual issue...   I was just thinking about keeping documents vital to a High Court JR case hidden and ummm ...  "hiding criminality". Naughty.

And then... in another case U.S. tech giant Raytheon get a wedge from The Borders Agency because they went along with that "Agency" who didn't know what they were doing and chose to cover up and hide official incompetence... "the tribunal criticised UKBA officials for failing to properly brief the home secretary" - funny that ... of course that'd never happen at the good 'ole EA would it?

With age come usually a bit of perspective.... so in the absence of a telegram from Buckingham Palace for getting to 100 I'll substitute a bit of stolen profundity that got my attention a few weeks back:

"I thought of the difference between virtue and piety, and saw that virtue is the doing of good, whereas piety is the avoidance of ‘wrong’.

In a world dominated by PC orthodoxy, and quota filling, the society will become ever more pious and less virtuous, simply because it is an easier state to achieve, especially if you have a vigorous ego but little talent to match it.

Giving more power to the State will increase malfeasance, as the talentless displace the virtuous, all the new power must be there to direct the cover-up of the ensuing systematic incompetence."(Stolen from here)

I never thought of The Environment Agency as being pious..... not that some officials seem overly bothered even about doing "wrong".

Another New Broom

Us yokels being occasionally behind the curve missed this....  After Liz Truss gets a promotion to Secretary of State at DEFRA - her first appointment ... the EA rather quietly gets a new chairperson.

Did we have a senior moment or was Chris Smith advertised last year to be leaving by June 2014 - and does the extension to September reveal a problem getting a suitable candidate to grasp the poison chalice?

From ENDS Reports  (and h/t Henry)

Dilley confirmed as new Environment Agency chair

By Isabella Kaminski

22 July 2014 13:00 BST

DEFRA has appointed Sir Philip Dilley as the new chair of the Environment Agency.

Dilley, former executive chairman of engineering firm Arup, replaces Lord Chris Smith of Finsbury who is stepping down on 7 September.

DEFRA made the announcement on 22 July following the approval of the House of Commons Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (EFRA) committee.

At a pre-appointment hearing on 15 July Dilley was questioned by the EFRA committee about his ability to take the Environment Agency through a period of significant restructuring and budget cuts.

Although MPs approved the appointment, they questioned DEFRA’s decision to extend the time commitment of the job from two to ‘two-to-three’ days a week, and to raise the salary from £60,632 to £100,000.

He will be the first agency chair from a business background.

The decision to appoint Dilley was one of first made by Liz Truss as new environment secretary.

In a statement she said: “This is a vital role which carries major responsibilities. I am delighted to have confirmed Sir Philip Dilley as chairman of the Environment Agency and I look forward to him bringing his leadership, experience and gravitas to the board.”

Dilley was knighted in the Queen’s birthday honours list in June.

It's likely (O.K. certain...) that files/reports about Avoncliff will be on Sir Philip's desk sooner rather than later .....   (Google Sir Philip Dilley)

It's caused a bit of spluttering at The Guardian  and no doubt when FoE and Greenpeace catch up there'll be a blizzard of ad-hom name calling - then aagain maybe not - he gave £2000 to the Scottish Labour Party.

EDIT From The Role Description: "You will promote a positive and constructive relationship with everyone that works with the Environment Agency including local government and local communities, business and industry, planners and developers, and a wide range of other interest groups. Providing excellent customer service will be core to your role."

Right-oh ...

Understatement

Henry at Inside The EA  has a couple of recent posts up about conflicts of interest, bribes, favouritism and an inconsistent regulatory approach - describing actions known to him when he was actually inside the EA. Whilst it is gratifying to see our prejudices verified - what is not gratifying in any way shape or form is to see criminal behaviour  perpetrated by public officials not being addressed and dealt with.

We are now approaching 5 years down the line, a show-piece project which ticks the "public interest" boxes for green energy, industrial heritage and maintenance of infrastructure - has been obstructed mostly by foul means to indulge the whims of corrupt, arrogant and self indulgent officials - who, in order to spitefully cause harm to the project at North Mill - have connived to award a water licence to somebody that doesn't own the property in question and presently has no legal right, title or covenant in place which allows legitimate work to progress. i.e. they've awarded a paper licence out of - yes....sheer undiluted spite (using your money!).

This was supposed to be a water licence application - but officials have turned it into an expensive circus. The final cost of this mess - to the public purse alone is now likely to exceed  £2 million pounds. 

The EA officials conniving, dishonest actions were unlawful the first time around and that cost the public a pile of money - they did the same thing again and they have twisted every facet of the water licence process this, second time through the process - to impose an arbitrary and very deliberately crippled outcome.

No doubt the departure of Owen Paterson from DEFRA has signalled for some in the EA a return to the good old days of nil oversight and an ever increasing budget.

The EA needs root and branch reform - or a reboot. That dishonesty, cheating, fraud and just breathtaking indolence are easily identifiable in a public body is bad enough - that it is tolerated by management is simply wrong. That the EA are in charge of "waste" is an almost unbearable irony!

There is more woe on the way for EA officials - I hope that instead of "lessons learnt" and back to work  - that the quite astounding carnival of abuses of position and process are addressed robustly.

And the question has to be asked - who's going to replace Chris Smith eh?

I offer a takeaway from this mini rant in the shape of a quote from "Henry" that must for the moment serve as a warning to anybody interacting with this bureaucracy:

"The message I would like to get out is how the power given to the Agency is regularly abused, how personal opinions and biases impact real people and businesses with no benefit to the environmental or human health, and that what the Agency communicates to the outside world is usually a far cry from what is encouraged internally".  - "Henry" July 2014

To the politicians reading this blog - do you think it's acceptable that abuses like those documented here and in other places are allowed to continue? Are self indulgent abuse of power, contempt for the law and wholesale cheating by unelected public officials/servants (?!) acceptable?

Smiffy's Swansong - " Save the EA !! "

Chris "wrong type of rain" Smith is in the news again as he seeks to undermine his boss and influence the selection of his replacement at the top of the dysfunctional Environment Agency. The "noble lord" was given a pulpit and free ride in The Guardian  to attack his boss Owen Paterson and further spout his ill informed alarmist twaddle on Channel 4 News ( here at 3m:29s in ) on Thursday in another softball interview with Jon Snow - Smith yet again displays the quite towering arrogance, hubris and stultifying political correctness that we've come to expect.

EDIT Busy boy Chris has been scampering around putting words into Owen Paterson's mouth for a third time at the BBC too... listen HERE at 1h 17 mins in.  I'd have a word with him....

Homeopathic Dredging Fat Controller

Looking at the calendar -  we were under the impression that Smiffy was already gone - out to pasture, to indulge himself with the pile of pensions and gratuities he's lined up after his rather less than sparkling career of "achievement"... a sad loss to public life /sarc

We do wonder if this is the start of a "Save The Environment Agency" campaign since Owen Paterson - as Smiffy's supposed boss is quite likely to have considerable sway in the choice of Smith's successor - and more to the point - the shape of the organisation after Smiffy's departure.

Smith seems to have been goosed into a bit of action by the goons at the top of the EA as he's now even more untouchable than he was when actually "in post". Positioning The EA as "defenders of the planet" and proclaiming that they have some sort of climate change expertise - when the actual facts are utterly at odds with these assertions.

We earnestly hope that Mr. Paterson takes a sharp axe to the EA and P45s the bad boys and gets a sensible regime in place that eradicates the carnival of waste, abuses of power, corruption and egregious repeated incompetence that the EA is actually rather good at.

Remember folks - you saw it here first 

SAVE THE EA !!

(ohh! The Cuts, Woe The Cuts) 


Oh and Avoncliff is heading back to The High Court - if you didn't already know.....
A few hundred K of more public money hosed by the geniuses at Millbank, Horizon House and Trentside....

DEFRA Acknowledge "EA out of control"?

Maybe I'm willfully reading too much into this - but if they mean what they say (and that's not totally clear :-), then some scrutiny of what's going on at the EA is coming down the tracks...

Nicked from EndsReport here :http://www.endsreport.com/index.cfm?go=43910

DEFRA seeks to take strategic control of arm’s length bodies

By Isabella Kaminski

12 May 2014 11:07 BST

DEFRA is to give the Environment Agency and Natural England a stronger steer on their priorities at the start of each financial year.

The move is revealed in the department's latest improvement plan, which describes an elaborate set of changes to how it and its regulators function. This includes a new top-down approach to designing policies and allocating resources.

DEFRA denies the changes will compromise its regulators’ independence. But this assertion jars with the tone of the document, which says DEFRA and its “wider family” will operate increasingly as “one business” with a “single voice” that is more “strategic, flexible and resilient”.

It is a similar language to that being used at DECC.

According to the improvement plan, DEFRA’s board has decided it needs a better overall picture of what is happening throughout the department and its arm’s length bodies.

The plan says DEFRA will start setting priorities across the whole department “to avoid ‘gold plating’ of some customer services, policy and evidence”.

As well as bringing together structures, systems and processes, it wants to introduce clearer responsibilities for senior staff, eliminate duplication and provide “appropriate independence” for statutory bodies and functions.

This means it can “sharpen decisions on priorities when resources are tight” and will be “better at flexing resources to deal with an emergency because we have a system-wide understanding of where they are”.

Natural England and the Environment Agency have already been told to work more closely together and the department is making significantreforms to environmental reporting to avoid duplication.

DEFRA also wants a simpler accountability structure. Following their joint triennial review, the heads of the Environment Agency and Natural England were required to report directly to the secretary of state.

Strategic steer

Key to achieving these aims will be a “new HQ commissioning approach, replacing ‘bottom up’ or incremental approaches to policy design and resource allocation with stronger direction and strategic reprioritisation”. This is being piloted with the Environment Agency and Natural England.

When asked to elaborate, a DEFRA spokeswoman said this meant the department would outline regulators’ priorities at the start of the financial year, rather than throughout it.

She suggested this would be a matter of timing rather than a fundamental shift in how things are done. “It means DEFRA will give a clearer strategic steer or ask at the start of the corporate planning cycle. By doing this, the ‘network buddies’ should have greater certainty of priorities.”

The approach will be evaluated in July to see whether it has helped the regulators develop their corporate plans for 2015/16 more quickly and efficiently.

The spokeswoman said resource allocation would “remain a matter for the bodies” and denied the changes would alter or compromise their independence. But it is difficult to see how this would be the case in practice, given that DEFRA is taking such a top-down approach and its explicit aim of reprioritising resources across the department.

The improvement plan recognises that to achieve its aims it will need a “realistic plan of action, which takes people with us”. “Financial pressures are a key driver of reform, but this agenda is not ‘just about the money’. Neither is it ‘just about survival’. It’s about future success.”

As such DEFRA is seeking to enact culture change within its ranks. This was one of the aims of the ‘red-tape challenge’.

A strategic reform plan published in April says it has introduced a new system, Policy Implementation Management and Made Simple (PIMMS), to “improve and support greater openness within DEFRA’s policy development process and a more consistent approach across the organisation.”

This includes new policy appraisal statements to formally start new policies and impact assessments.

It will also set up a ‘policy tracker’, which will be the single database of regulatory and non-regulatory policies. DEFRA says this will improve the quality of reporting to senior managers and their ability to prioritise activities and resources.

It also promises new training programmes, drop-in sessions, workshops and internal communications, complemented by improved internal guidance.