Corporate report

Environment Agency business plan 2025 to 2026

Updated 30 April 2025

Applies to England

1. Introduction

The Environment Agency (EA) is a non-departmental public body established in 1996 and sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). In our roles as regulator, operator, adviser, responder and research centre, we are tasked with:

• protecting and enhancing the environment as a whole
• contributing towards sustainable development

Our remit primarily covers England, though our influence and collaboration with other UK environmental bodies and partners extends beyond England’s borders.

England represents approximately:

• 13 million hectares of land
• 22,000 miles (35,000 km) of river
• 3,100 miles (5,000 km) of coastline seawards to the three-mile limit, which includes 2 million hectares of coastal waters

We cannot succeed alone. We must invest in collaboration and delivering outcomes with others at national and local levels:

• within Defra group
• across government
• environmental non-government organisations (eNGOs)
• communities
• private sector

Through our work we continue to contribute towards the 25 Year Environment Plan (25YEP) but recognise the Environment Act 2021 legally enshrined the commitment to refresh it every 5 years.

In 2023 the first review of the 25YEP resulted in the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP). The new UK government have also conducted a rapid review of the EIP. We continue to provide support on the statutory review of the plan.  

This business plan sets out our priorities for 2025 to 2026. It will help focus our delivery as we transition to the revised ambition of the EIP and our new corporate strategy. Both documents are due to be published later this year.

2.  Foreword

2024 to 2025 was a successful year where we delivered a range of change programmes to enhance our delivery. The creation of a Strategy, Transformation and Assurance Directorate is now enabling more services to be delivered once on behalf of the organisation. This has contributed towards the delivery of efficiency savings of over £23m during the year.

Our Water Industry Regulation Transformation Programme is delivering more inspections and pushing water companies to perform better. We published our ‘National assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk in England 2024’ report. It provides the clearest understanding of risk around the country to date and will help government and local communities plan for and improve flood resilience.

When flooding does take place, we continue to be there for the nation. We are hugely proud of our teams’ work throughout last winter.  During Storm Bert, our incident teams worked all hours to keep communities safe from flooding. Sadly over 1300 properties flooded, but had it not been for our work, that figure would have been nearer 40,000.

This year our priorities are:

• supporting sustainable growth through faster and more reliable planning and permitting services
• cleaning up our rivers, supporting the governments agenda and implementing the Water Special Measures Act
• becoming a modern, efficient and digitalised regulator
• maintenance of our flood assets
• reducing our reliance on grant-in-aid and putting our funding on a sustainable and efficient base

Our permitting performance continues to be a priority. It has improved over recent years, but we need to build on that momentum and stretch our targets. Our Regulatory Services Programme of improvements will increase the pace of delivery through:

• simpler processes and guidance
• improved capability
• better customer communication

This will drive us towards our goal of delivering 95% of permit determinations within our statutory timeframes.

We will continue our work with the new UK government to implement the outcomes and recommendations of the reforms to our environmental regulatory framework. We have been actively supporting several reviews such as the:

• Dan Corry review (to assess Defra’s regulatory landscape)
• Cunliffe review into the water industry and regulatory frameworks

We welcome them both. They present huge opportunities to improve how we deliver our strategic aims and legal responsibilities.

Broader digitalisation across the organisation will help us become more efficient and make our services more accessible. It will mean faster responses and greater transparency, ultimately improving outcomes for communities and the environment.

Investing in the longevity of the assets we already have is as important as building new ones. February’s announcement included much needed funding for flood risk asset maintenance with £72 million made available for restoration and repair in 2025 to 2026.

This business plan aligns with our new corporate strategy. When the strategy is published later this year, we will have set out the short-term choices we are making to achieve the greatest impact in the long term. Together, the plan and the strategy will keep us focussed on strengthening our most valuable assets - our people and our culture. Our values and the expertise, resilience and commitment of our people are the foundations of everything we do.

Alan Lovell, Chair

Philip Duffy, Chief Executive and Accounting Officer

3. 2024 to 2025 performance highlights

The following table highlights key achievements made during the 2024 to 2025 financial year. Corporate scorecard quarterly reports, including Red, Green, Amber (RAG) status are published on GOV.UK.

Performance Area	Highlight
Water company compliance inspections	We have carried out over 4,600 inspections of wastewater treatment sites, pumping stations and storm overflows (2024 to 2025 target was 4,000 inspections)
Number of farm inspections	We have carried out over 4,000 farm inspections (2024 to 2025 target was 4,000 farm inspections)
Number of properties better protected from flooding	We have delivered our cumulative target of 113,272 properties better protected from flooding as part of the second programme of the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Capital Investment Programme (2021 to 2026) - 27,354 properties were better protected in 2024 to 2025
Local authority planning applications influenced	We met our target of 97% of decision notices successfully influenced
Number of high-risk illegal waste sites stopped	As a result of focussing on this work we exceeded our target to stop 90 active high-risk illegal waste sites during 2024 to 2025 by stopping 143 sites.  Many of these sites are now the subject of ongoing criminal investigation.
Innovation actions delivered in flood and coastal resilience to adapt to a changing climate	88% of innovation actions delivered in flood and coastal resilience to adapt to a changing climate are on track / complete (2024 to 2025 target was 80%)
Permit compliance	97% of environmental permits are compliant (2024 to 2025 target was 97%)
£15m efficiencies target to fulfil commitments made as part of SR21	We are currently forecasting over £23 million of efficiency gains

4. Laying the foundations of our new corporate strategy

This business plan builds on our 2024 to 2025 plan and sets out our priorities for delivery this year. It has been developed in alignment with our new corporate strategy to ensure:

• we continue to steer our business in the short term
• short term delivery is consistent with our long-term goals and 5-year outcomes

Our corporate scorecard for 2025 to 2026 has also been developed alongside our new corporate strategy which will be published later this year.

Our annual business plans will then provide a structured approach to measuring our performance and delivery against the 5-year outcomes and long-term goals set out in the new corporate strategy.  Its delivery will continue to be tracked and published on GOV.UK in regular quarterly updates of our corporate scorecard.

We will publish our full performance results for the 2024 to 2025 year on this page as soon as the information becomes available. The published results will include a table showing the red, amber, green scores for each of our performance measures, along with the actual figures achieved and corresponding targets.

This transparent reporting allows stakeholders to see clearly how we are progressing in meeting our commitments for:

• protecting and enhancing the environment
• contributing towards sustainable development

5. Our priorities for 2025 to 2026

Our priorities this year reflect our role in supporting the UK government in delivering sustainable economic growth while supporting nature’s recovery. They are the key outcomes we aim to deliver this year and through doing so, we will:

• enhance our services
• deliver greater impact for the public, wildlife and environment

On sustainable growth we will:

• commit to improving our land use planning services, meeting our target to issue 95% of decisions within 21 days by September 2025
• continue to invest in building flood defences - aiming to better protect around 25,000 properties in 2025 to 2026
• make our permitting services more efficient and effective for key growth sectors, supporting our goal to issue 95% of permits within agreed timescales
• create a more transparent data system for our regulation
• support the Government’s approach to strategic spatial planning
• work with Government to deliver the Regulation Action Plan and to reform the regulatory framework

On water we will:

• regulate to improve the environmental performance of the water industry
• work with Ofwat to ensure delivery of the water infrastructure investment agreed for 2025 to 2030
• respond to the recommendations of the Independent Water Commission
• continue to address water quantity pressures, deliver water and wetland habitat restoration and creation and drive down nutrients in the environment
• support Defra in developing and implementing bathing water reform measures, subject to securing long term funding
• ensure 98% of bathing water quality monitoring samples are collected and analysed

On becoming a modern, efficient and digitalised regulator, we will:

• re-design and continuously improve the service around what users tell us they need, and ensure we have the correct skills and capabilities to deliver
• develop a Digital Transformation Strategy, enhance our digital capability, transparency, control strategies and optimise performance on regulatory activities for all sectors
• support a shift in the regulatory system towards becoming more of a partner

On maintenance of our flood assets, we will:

• take a systems-based approach to asset management and incident recovery, ensuring our flood defences are reliable and ready for the challenges of our warming climate

On funding we will:

• further diversify our income, enhance our cost recovery of our services and work to a prioritised fees and charges programme

6. Delivery areas for the year ahead

Our delivery areas are some of the key actions we will take to achieve our priorities.

They define the work we will be delivering this year and how we will track our performance through our corporate scorecard measures.

6.1 Healthy air, land and water

Water

We will focus on:  

• improving the environmental performance of the water industry by strengthening our regulation through further recruitment and capability building of staff, enabling more water industry inspections and action against offenders (including major investigations into potential non-compliance) and implementing new powers in 2025 to 2026 in the Water (Special Measures) Act
• working with Government to set the direction for water through the Future Water Framework, Water 2100, the National Framework for Water Resources, Independent Water Commission and through our contributions to Government policy and legislative development including the EIP refresh
• ensuring water companies deliver the investment agreed for 2025 to 2030; working with them and with OFWAT to plan for further investment needed
• supporting Defra in development and implementation of Bathing Water reform measures subject to securing long term funding
• modernising our permits, completing Asset Management Plan (AMP) 7 and 8 permit reviews, and developing innovative permitting to support nature-based solutions and other catchment permitting interventions

Success will be measured through our corporate scorecard measures

We will continue to focus on delivery of clean and plentiful water – implementing new powers from the Water (Special Measures) Act.

Our corporate scorecard targets are:

• conduct 10,000 water company compliance inspections
• 90% of non-compliant water company sewage treatment works to be brought back into compliance
• complete 4,000 agriculture outcomes and farm inspections
• 98% of bathing water quality monitoring samples to be collected and analysed

Land and air 

We will focus on:  

• driving nature recovery through regulation and investing in environmental infrastructure, working with natural processes and applying nature-based solutions to halt species decline and build resilient ecosystems that support sustainable growth
• informing the design and delivery of Agri-Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS), Biodiversity Net Gain, Protected Landscapes and Protected Sites Strategies and Peatland Restoration as well as emerging policies like the Nature Restoration Fund.
• regulation of chemicals, including setting standards and assessment levels for forever chemicals, and working with government, regulators, NGOs and industry to understand risks and collaborate on issues and solutions
• high-risk activity, including Control of Major Accidents Hazards (COMAH), landfill regulation and abandoned sites, hazardous waste, agriculture compliance, oil refineries, nuclear sites, and radioactive sources to minimise adverse impacts on the environment and communities
• operating, maintaining and expanding our air quality monitoring networks to inform compliance and provide information to the public on air quality
• eliminating crime in the waste sector by improving the way we use our data and intelligence, working in partnership and across government

Success will be measured through our Corporate Scorecard measure:

We will reduce the impact of regulated and illegal waste on the environment.

Our Corporate Scorecard target is:

We will target at least 90 high-risk illegal waste sites (IWS). They will be ‘stopped’ which means either:

• there is subsequently no activity for a minimum of 28 days
• that site has been brought into compliance

6.2 Green Growth and a sustainable future

Planning

We will focus on:

• improving and delivering land use planning, including through the UK government’s proposed land use framework, to help achieve nature recovery, clean and plentiful water, climate resilience and emissions reduction, agriculture and food security, and the delivery of new infrastructure and housing
• embedding actions required to deliver the UK government’s agenda including through the EIP, Planning and Infrastructure Bill, Industrial Strategy and Circular Economy ambitions
• delivery of strategic advice, improved planning services and early involvement in environmental infrastructure investments that enable both environmental capacity and economic growth through:
  • meeting our target to respond to planning applications within 21 days
  • contributing to the New Towns Taskforce, Local Authorities’ Local Plans, Spatial Development Strategies and Local Nature Recovery Strategies
  • streamlining applications through the Development Control Process for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects
  • streamlining risk-based approaches to bringing contaminated land and historic landfill sites back into development use
  • our strategic partnership with the Office for Investment
  • publishing our final report on environmental capacity in the industrial clusters

Success will be measured through our Corporate Scorecard measure:

We will respond to local plan consultations and planning applications within agreed timescales.

Our Corporate Scorecard target is:

• 95% of planning application consultations and pre-application enquiries are responded to within 21 days

Permitting and regulation

We will focus on:

• ensuring the delivery of our more ambitious permitting target which will mean 95% of our permits are issued within timescale (increased from 75% in 2024 to 2025)
• contributing towards and supporting the implementation of Government reviews including the Corry review
• introducing a bespoke ‘tracked’ permitting service for the most complex applications and establishing a Hydrogen and Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage Programme to provide projects in this sector with better guidance and advice
• launching a ‘standard rules’ approach for research and development work at industrial installations in 2025 which will make trialling and scaling up of new technologies easier and should help boost investment and productivity
• supporting the Government’s clean energy mission, including delivery of nuclear new build, enabling the implementation and adoption of new low carbon technologies, the production of clean tech, domestic resilience in critical minerals and the expansion of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, bringing in the new Clean Heat Market Mechanism Scheme
• supporting the Government’s ambitions to transition to a zero-waste economy; regulating the new scheme for extended producer responsibility, continuing to deliver the collection and packaging waste reforms, taking an integrated approach to chemicals, combatting waste crime, and collaborating with Defra and the Circular Economy Taskforce to aid delivery of early recommendations.

Success will be measured through our Corporate Scorecard measure:

We will protect the environment and communities and support economic growth by determining permit applications consistently, effectively and within prescribed timescales. 

Our Corporate Scorecard target is:

• 95% of category 1 – 4 permit applications are determined within target timescales

6.3 A nation resilient to climate change

Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Programme

In the year ahead we will:

• conclude the government’s £2.65 billion 2-year programme for flood protection and resilience to better protect 52,000 properties
• conclude the allocation of the £91 million Internal Drainage Boards fund to protect agricultural land and rural communities
• deliver, as part of our programme, natural flood management schemes and meet statutory requirements on habitat creation and biodiversity net gain
• develop the pipeline of future flood resilience projects for the next Flood Investment Programme (including for surface water, natural flood management and property level resilience and increased maintenance and refurbishment of existing assets), based on National Flood Risk Assessment (NaFRA2) for implementation through Spending Review 2025
• through our Transformation Programme we will transition our ways of working and organisational design to ensure we are well prepared to deliver the next flood investment programme and move to a reliability centred approach to managing our flood, water and navigation assets in line with our Asset Management Strategy. This will improve our performance both in how we develop new assets and how we maintain our existing asset base, which we will measure through revised metrics

Success will be measured through our Corporate Scorecard measures:

We will deliver the agreed capital programme for both the Environment Agency and Risk Management Authorities to better protect properties from flooding by 2026 and deliver wider environmental benefits.

Our Corporate Scorecard targets are:

• a cumulative 2-year target (2024 to 2025 – 2025 to 2026) of 52,000 properties better protected from flooding as part of the second programme of the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Capital Investment Programme.  This is part of the overall 5-year 140,272 target (2021 to 2026)
• 80% on track / complete innovation actions delivered in flood and coastal resilience to adapt to a changing climate

Asset operation and maintenance

We will focus on: 

• implementing a reliability centred systems-based approach to asset management that is catchment based and digital by design    
• delivering post incident recovery and develop future asset programmes 
• integrating our approach to management of flood, water and navigation assets
• improving performance metrics for assets for future flood investment programmes to encompass whole life asset management metrics

Success will be measured through our Corporate Scorecard measure:

We will maintain our assets to ensure reliable operation and response.

Our Corporate Scorecard target is:

• at least 92% of assets at required condition

Incident management and response

We will prepare for, respond to and support recovery from high-risk flooding and environmental incidents including major incidents.

We will focus on:

• transforming the Incident Management Service to build organisational resilience in Emergency Planning and Incident Response
• delivery of our statutory responsibilities, including as a Category 1 Responder under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004
• improvements to our Incident Response operating frameworks and to how we collect, use and share information and intelligence internally and with response partners
• strengthening and improving engagement with key partners and building trust and confidence in principal stakeholders
• improving preparedness and resilience to all types of flooding affecting people, homes and businesses through our contribution as part of the Floods Resilience Taskforce

Success will be measured through our Corporate Scorecard measure:

We will prepare for, respond to and support recovery from high-risk flooding and environmental incidents including major incidents.

Our Corporate Scorecard target is:

• incident cells fully filled with a target of 95% of cells at full functional capacity

People, culture and ways of working

We are committed to making the Environment Agency a place where people from all backgrounds and every corner of the country can thrive and fulfil their potential.

The health, safety, and wellbeing of our people, partners, and the public who interact with our assets remain core to everything we do.  

We will focus on:

• defining the culture, values and behaviours we need to deliver our new corporate strategy
• attracting and retaining exceptional talent at all levels by moving towards a centralised recruitment model and embedding new approaches that build capability, career paths and drive professional communities of practice
• launching our new health, safety and wellbeing strategy focused on strengthening our culture through improving our management system standards and behavioural safety programmes
• taking a data driven approach to further embed fairness and increase the diversity of our workforce
• taking action on the recent Independent Review of Respect and Inclusion, delivering a more efficient and impactful approach to work in this area

Our corporate scorecard targets are:

• a 0.11 Lost Time Incident (LTI) frequency rate limit per 100,000 hours
• a rate of 50% of executive managers who are female
• an increasing proportion of colleagues from minority ethnic backgrounds

Sustainability

We will deliver the Environment Agency’s corporate sustainability commitments, to meet government targets.

We will focus on:

• publishing our renewed sustainability strategy
• delivering biodiversity gain across our operations
• continuing to safeguard our staff and suppliers from modern slavery
• ensuring compliance with environmental legislation in all our activities

Our Corporate Scorecard targets are:

• reduce our carbon emissions to 208,133 tonnes in 2025 to 2026
• become a net zero organisation by 2045 to 2050

Digital and technology

We will modernise our services and working environment through:

• changing how we work to deliver digital services which are user led
• automating key processes by volume in our national services, subject to managing risk
• using AI to accelerate processing of our highest volume permitting operations
• the provision of an online option for all transactions, removing all remaining ‘paper’ forms
• using data to increase transparency and insights which target our effort on regulation, asset maintenance and incidents proactively
• commencing transformation of our planning, flood warning and incident reporting services which will deliver in year improvements

7.  Our funding

The Environment Agency’s total budget for 2025 to 2026 is £2,274 million.  This is an increase of £188 million compared to our £2,086 million budget in 2024 to 2025 and includes an increase of capital funding for flood outcomes.  Our budget may also change throughout 2025 to 2026 as our charge income may increase because of planned charge income reviews.

As shown in the table, funding to deliver our flood related outcomes is predominantly received from government. Environment protection outcomes are predominantly generated through our fees and charges.

	Flood resource £m	Flood capital £m	Environment Protection resource £m	Environment Protection capital £m	Total - Flood and Environment Protection (capital and resource £m)
Grant-in-aid	572	922	108	68	1670
Charges and other income	67	24	513	0	604
Total	639	946	621	68	2274

This budget has been allocated across the business to:

• maximise our ability to deliver as one organisation
• enable the delivery of our priorities set out in this business plan

We will see a shift this year in terms of investment for flood risk asset maintenance with £72 million made available for restoration and repair. We are also investing in transformation which continues our journey to become a modern, efficient and digitised regulator.

We are committed to efficiencies as a public body and reducing our reliance on grant-in-aid funding. We will continue to implement efficiency programmes and explore what can be achieved in the short and long term.

We are also in the process of developing an over-arching funding strategy which will sit alongside our new corporate strategy. This strategy will help us to:

• reduce reliance on government funding
• pursue greater cost recovery
• charge payer contributions, commercial income streams, and leverage private investment towards environmental outcomes

This diversified approach will provide increased financial flexibility. The aim is to enable us to be more agile and responsive to fast evolving priorities so we can deliver the expectations placed upon us.