Natural England (NE) and the Environment Agency (EA) have released a joint Action Plan detailing ‘how [they] will work more closely together to do more for people and the environment’, following on from their triennial review.

The triennial review – part of government’s rolling programme that examines non-departmental delivery bodies every three years – was launched in December 2012, to assess the functions the bodies carry out and how they ‘ensure that… [there are] sufficiently strong and resilient delivery bodies to meet [government’s] environmental ambitions’.

Proposals listed in the paper included keeping both agencies separate and introducing budget cuts to improve service, or merging the two agencies together to form a single body responsible for environmental affairs.

However, following stakeholder concerns that merging the two bodies would lead to: increased costs; functions being ‘swamped’; ineffective ‘conflict resolution’; loss of a ‘single, independent voice for nature’; and disruption, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced that the EA and NE would continue to work as two separate bodies.

Action Plan details

As such, the two bodies have now launched a Triennial Review Joint Action Plan (in consultation with Defra and other government departments),which outlines how NE and the EA will ‘work together to maximise environmental outcomes’ from their water, flood risk management and biodiversity programmes; ‘improve the customer experience’ provided by the two bodies; and ‘drive further efficiencies’ in service delivery.

According to the plan, the EA’s purpose is to ‘protect or enhance the environment, taken as a whole’ so as to promote ‘the objective of achieving sustainable development’, while NE’s purpose is to ‘ensure that the natural environment is conserved, enhanced and managed for the benefit of present and future generations, thereby contributing to sustainable development’.

To create a ‘coherent culture that will provide improved service’ to customers, and make working together the ‘norm’, the organisations are developing plans to share more of their offices (they already share offices at nine locations) and join up some areas of work.

Actions outlined in the plan include:

• joining up work with local enterprise partnerships;
• delivering the Coastal Concordat, streamlining consenting processes in coastal areas;
• coordinating scheduled visits to joint clients (such as farmers);
• providing a single point of advice for offshore wind developers;
• providing a single account management for major developers when requested;
• joining up the Water Framework Directive with biodiversity and flood risk planning to deliver multiple outcomes;
• piloting joint charging arrangements for pre-application advice; and
• jointly delivering monitoring.

A non-executive joint sub-group of the two organisations' boards will oversee the implementation of the plan and a progress report on the implementation of the review will be released in June 2014.

The action plan comes ahead of budget cuts to the EA, which will see it reduce its work force by around 12 per cent (1,550 jobs) in the coming year.

Read the Environment Agency and Natural England’s Triennial Review Joint Action Plan.