Emma Howard Boyd’s letter (30 January) fails to address the allegations you reported by serving Environment Agency officers that frontline pollution response services have been cut and staff gagged.
I retired from the EA in 2014, having worked there since its inception in 1996, initially leading a team of dedicated officers in exactly this work. Over that 18 years, there was an inexorable shift in resources from frontline pollution and crime prevention work to higher-paid jobs managing policy and legislation. The old adage to “follow the money” saw the lion’s share of the EA’s resources spent on flood risk management. When I recently reported a pollution incident, I was shocked to discover that the system being used to record my information was the same one that I helped to develop 20 years ago.
