The 150m long mountain of rubbish that has been illegally dumped beside the A34 and near the River Cherwell in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, December 12, 2025THE government and regulators may have failed to comply with key laws on protecting water quality in rivers, lakes and seas, the environmental watchdog said today.
The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) confirmed it had identified possible failures by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Environment Agency to comply with rules designed to protect and improve water quality.
Under the regulations, water quality plans have to be in place for individual water bodies.
But the OEP said it found the plans tended to be too generic, did not address specific issues at individual sites and were being put in place despite low government confidence their objectives could be met.
As a result, key targets for improvement of water bodies by 2027 are highly likely to be missed, the watchdog said.
The OEP has sent both Defra and the Environment Agency “information notices” setting out the suspected failures, and they have two months to formally respond.
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