The Angry Cheese.

angry cheese

On Monday, 3 February 2014,

A question I would add to this is that I am lead to understand that ALL of the dredging equipment was scrapped for almost zero value by the EA when they took over some 20 years ago.
If true then this MUST be investigated and those responsible prosecuted for malfeasance or theft from the public purse.

As usual, Mr Walker, I won't hold my breath waiting for you to get your thumbs out of your rectum to do something about this and the appalling revelations below about the EA, as I know you are scared stiff of any confrontation and actually looking after your constituent's concerns, and will avoid effecting any meaningful work at all costs. Just look at the relative figures in the table and then at the performance of this huge army!

National EA	Land Area (km2)	Coastline (km)	Population	Staff	Budget
England (exc Wales/Scotland)	130,395	12,429	53 million	11,200	£1.2B
United States EPA	9,826,675	19,924	313.9 million	15,913	£4.8B
Canadian EA	9,984,670	202,080	34.9 million	6,800	£0.52B
Below 5 EU EAs COMBINED	1,608,777	17,774	169.9 million	3,677	£0.82B

Maybe it is time YOU were Tim Yeo'd by the constituency!

Nicholas K. Chance

Inside the Environment Agency - Experiences from EA Insiders

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Environment Agency Insiders

Henry
Exposing the internal waste of tax payer and licence payer funds, abuse of working/flexi time and annual leave by staff members, mismanagement by senior and line managers, and the victimisation and harassment of licence holders and operators.

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Inside the Environment Agency 2014 - Exposing the Waste

We'd like to encourage all to leave their comments - we already have hundreds of comments from serving and ex-EA staff, members of the public and even some media folk. Take your time to browse the posts (38+ last count) detailing the true internal workings of the Environment Agency. Click the top left icon for about and to explore past posts. Follow us @EnvAgencyAbuse - Blog stats: 927,392 hits

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Environment Agency One of Biggest in the World?

Inside the Environment Agency 2014 - Exposing the Waste

National EA	Land Area (km2)	Coastline (km)	Population	Staff	Budget
England (exc Wales/Scotland)	130,395	12,429	53 million	11,200	£1.2B
United States EPA	9,826,675	19,924	313.9 million	15,913	£4.8B
Canadian EA	9,984,670	202,080	34.9 million	6,800	£0.52B
Below 5 EU EAs COMBINED	1,608,777	17,774	169.9 million	3,677	£0.82B
Denmark	43,094	7,314	5.6 million	450	£103m
France	674,843	4,853	65 million	820	£540m
Germany	357,021	2,389	81 million	1,400	£84m
Sweden	449,964	3,218	9.5 million	530	£33m
Austria	83,855	0	8.5 million	477	£36m

Although not a perfect like-for-like comparison, it does put the size of our Environment Agency in perspective - so what choices are you talking about Lord Smith, because it appears you receive more than enough to carry out the duties you have been given. Maybe if you took care of the large scale abuse/waste by staff, and the mismanagement by senior and line managers, you might find you have more than enough to protect "town and country".
References below - all Environment Agencies have very similar duties: environmental protection, water resource management, severe weather monitoring, ecology, sustainable development, climate change adaptation, waste regulations, environmental planning, air quality and pollution, general pollution monitoring and enforcement, fisheries, navigation, flood and coastal management and major industry regulation. Some, like the French, US and Canadian EAs have additional duties such as management of energy industry, which in the UK falls under DECC.
In the UK, as in other countries, there are also other bodies responsible for flood management, including the local councils and emergency services - Do councils deal with flooding?
England's EA is almost the size of the Canadian, Danish, French, German, Swedish and Austrian EAs COMBINED! Going by these statistics, it would appear that the Environment Agency is overstaffed by around 9,000 and has a budget that appears to be £0.5-1 billion too much.
This, along with what I and others have experienced, highlights the dire need for an indepth analysis and review of the Environment Agency with the aim of restructuring the body to ensure that tax payer money is being spent effectively.
References: English Environment Agency | German Federal Environment Agency | French Energy & Environment Agency | Swedish EPA | Austrian EA | Danish EPA | List of countries by length of coastline | US EPA| Environment Canada
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Environment Officers still abusing working/flexi time and annual leave

Inside the Environment Agency 2014 - Exposing the Waste

Thanks to my very loyal colleague who still works inside the Environment Agency (although also disillusioned by it all), I now have a copy of the annual leave record cards used by staff. This is kept by the staff member, completed by the staff member and signed by the line manager. As exposed in an earlier post, this system is regularly abused by significant numbers of staff members, including line management. Despite staff only being entitled to 25 to 30 days annual leave (plus additional flexi days - if they put in the hours), I have witnessed, and my loyal internal friends still attest to, many staff taking far in excess of these entitlements - as many as three months in some instances.
Working hours are similarly logged on a simple spreadsheet and updated to the IBIS system by the staff members themselves (there has been discussions about the money wasted on this archaic system in the news). Apparently, abuse of this system is also continuing, despite the recent announcement of cuts. Again, as mentioned in earlier posts, I have witnessed staff come in at 10am and go home at 3pm and still record that they worked 9am to 5pm (7am to 3pm, 10am to 6pm, etc). Other abuses still apparently continue, such as field staff (especially Environment Officers) claiming to carry out site/incident visits, but in actual fact going home, going shopping and carrying out other domestic activities whilst claiming to be working, staff with home working privileges who do anything but, as well as claiming back higher mileage expenses than what they actually incur - I remember one Officer who claimed to be making an additional £90-100 per month through logging extra mileage.
Hopefully, this blog will continue to paint a picture of the actual internal workings of the Environment Agency. It should help illustrate the amount of waste and mismanagement taking place. This is, of course, leaving out the bullying and harassment of staff members who don't tow the line and of operators who question our decisions.

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More Environment Agency Staff Experiences #4

Inside the Environment Agency 2014 - Exposing the Waste

In addition to the dozens of Environment Agency staff experiences posted previously on this blog (see More Environment Agency Staff Experiences #1, 2 & 3), here are even more that have come in over the past few weeks:

Rick Blade: “I will never forget my team leader saying he "didnt really know how many team members he had as some had been on maternity leave so long, it had literally been years since he had seen them."”

Rick Blade: “My sympathies were always with the older guys marking time till their retirement, and hating every hour of form-filling, and desk-work-procedures that their river supervision job had been reduced to. One old timer said sadly to me once " See.. that gully there overflows now and then and needs keeping clean, or those houses will flood. When I`m gone no one will remember or will do it, on them dark nights." "Certainly not them lot" and he waved his hand, office-ward, toward the banks of new generation children sitting at their PCs, in the warm."

Rachel: “Completely agree with everything on here. I'm fed up of people saying they're stressed, not paid enough and too much to do, they don't know the meaning of the word stressed, are paid more than enough for what they do and can't possibly have too much to do if they only work 37 hours a week! This blog needs to go to the papers so the country can see where their money really goes. 1700 job cuts, the agency could manage perfectly well with half the staff if people actually worked a full week. Claiming a 12 day for sitting on a train and having dinner paid for is disgusting. I know people who work in a different office twice a week and claim for travel time, they do not work on the train so effectively work a four day week. Not even that as they have enough flexi to finish at 3 on a Friday. We need to change this! I appreciate not all staff are like this but too many are.”

Steve: “Fact since the NRA was merged with others the flood defence / operational side of the EA has been over policed by the tree huggers from with in. fact water voles have more rights than people or property. Leaving rivers to self clean is absolute rubbish rivers need to be maintained and dredged to maintain / increase the amount of water contained hence eleviating the risk of out of bank flooding. As for not having enough money to carry out works there is more than enough as often at the end of year money is wasted on anything just to get it out of the door because if it's not spent you will have your budget slashed next year. its a joke the EA IS TOP HEAVY and does not have enough operatives on the coal face and those who are are demotivated and lazy. I my self has witnessed operational staff painting offices booking their time to an emergency flood defence code. Overtime being booked and not worked. I could write a book on what I,ve seen from with in and one final point how many flood defences could of been built with the amount and cost of change projects over the years!!”

EO: “2 years ive been working here and everything you say on this blog rings true for me. it is soo demotivating watching others come in late and leave early but always have enough for flexidays. i hope things get sorted soon or ill be looking for a new job with more motivated people. good job henry for bringing out.”

Stuck: “Speaking as an insider myself I share the same concerns BUT where else can one get a job with these perks. As much as I hate the wasteful culture its tolerable for the perks. Wish I had never joined that way I would never have been indoctrinated and wouldn't know about these privileges. Morals or money? With bills, I choose the money.”

Ariston: "Make no mistake - the abuse of flexi-time and working from home (a misnomer if ever I heard one) is just as prevalent in regions other than those you've mentioned. And that's coming from someone who's been there for only a short time. As you have pointed out, the majority of staff are hard-working and dedicated to their jobs, yet like anything, it is those staff that abuse their position that are conspicuous. Disgusting. And I too experienced discrimination in my interview yet somehow was offered the job. A very strange apple is the EA - and one that's perhaps rotten to the core."

Wasteman: "I worked for the EA for just under 2 years after leaving university. I completely agree with this post; I found it exasperating watching other members of my team flouting the flexitime 'rules'. With regard to working from home, I would also question exactly how much work can be done when some staff in my office would work at home with their young children. My opinion of the recently announced staff cuts is that they should provide an incentive to the work-shy officers and staff of the EA to increase their efforts. The EA has a difficult job to do in many areas, and this is made harder and more galling when members of teams so openly abuse their benefits. I was lucky enough to work in a team with some excellent officers who would work until the job was done rather than until they had completed 37.5 hours in a week. However, more often than not this meant that they would end up working harder to account for the shortcomings of their colleagues."
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Environment Agency's ~7,000 Vehicles

Inside the Environment Agency 2014 - Exposing the Waste

Interesting trivia on number of Environment Agency vehicles from the Avoncliff Blog, which even I didn't know: "To carry out its field duties, the EA operates a fleet of 4,747 company cars funded on contract hire with full maintenance (at high expense, along with the documented abuse of the mileage claim back system highlighted in this blog), with an additional 1,920 badged 4x4s. That's nearly 7,000 vehicles (plus trucks) - that's more than one official vehicle for every two employees... which does seem quite high - no?"

"Drivers of leased vehicles at the EA are paid a mileage rate and are not issued with fuel cards. This makes it very difficult for the EA to capture and analyse mileage data on each vehicle at the end of its contract, as it is recorded on a driver basis, rather than a vehicle basis" - resulting in abuse of the mileage system when staff over-report business mileage primarily by claiming expenses on personal trips/exaggerating business miles.
More money seems to be spent on high staff salaries, inefficient systems, unnecessary vehicles and toys, lost work time from system abuses, and excess number of managers/"specialists" than on flood defences!

Alan Blenkhorn makes a good point in the comments: "The Environment Agency was formed in 1996, so less than 20 years old. In almost every one of those years, the agency has been mired in controversy - the short flight debacle, flood defence failings, management bonuses, ad infinitum. The agency just does not work, so why won't this government do the right thing and reform it?"
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Environment Agency blamed over floods

Inside the Environment Agency 2014 - Exposing the Waste

With recent "revelations" into the mismanagement of rivers in the South-east, which has no doubt exacerbated the flooding situation there, it would be prudent for MPs, local communities and businesses to take this opportunity to heed the insider experiences raised by numerous ex and current serving Environment Agency staff here, and elsewhere. These issues concerning mismanagement, poor training, questionable staff practices, etc. are far more interwoven in all areas of the organisation, but seldom come to light because of the fear, by good staff, operators and others affected, of the negative backlash.
As "we" continue to point out, a thorough review into the organisation, right down to the day-to-day operations and activities of individual teams is essential to identify, isolate and correct these ever growing problems. This has yet to be done since its inception - that is, the haphazard integration aka slamming together of the original bodies that now hold the name of "Environment Agency"
The historical and current performance of the Environment Agency has proven that it's current structure, management and operational activities are not fit for purpose, and will continue to be a blackhole for public funds, as well as a drag on economic activities that the organisation regulates/protects - from flooding all the way through to the numerous activities it regulates.
This needs to be dealt with before it drops back under the radar, where these problems will lurk, until another catastrophe reveals these failings again!
BBC News - Environment Agency blamed over floods

'They found £31million for a BIRD SANCTUARY but won't pay £5million to dredge the river'
Environment Agency flood response criticised by MPs
MP blasts 'pathetic' Environment Agency over flooding chaos on Somerset Levels
Dredging will ease flooding in Somerset Levels, admits Environment Agency boss
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Word on the grapevine inside the EA

Inside the Environment Agency 2014 - Exposing the Waste

Sources have informed me that the most senior of management inside the Environment Agency have now begun an investigation into the issues raised here, and by others elsewhere (including from former and current serving Environment Agency staff). I can only hope that these issues are thoroughly exposed and dealt with. This is the very least that can be expected from a publicly funded organisation.
Whether this will fully resolve these issues, only time will tell!
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EA Alert Given AFTER Flooding Had Commenced

Inside the Environment Agency 2014 - Exposing the Waste

I recently posted about the slow response from the Environment Agency during December's floods - seems I was onto something: Environment Agency Confirms Alert Was Given After Flooding Had Commenced. Could problems with flood level monitoring equipment have happened elsewhere during the floods, subsequently reducing residents preparedness and impacting potential responses? Why weren't the Flood Officers aware of this issue and why did the Environment Agency not act accordingly to this information?
It would be good to hear from people affected to see what they thought of the Environment Agency's response to the recent floods - it appears to me, and many others observing the news, that other emergency and council services were already on the ball at least a day or two before the Environment Agency.
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Another Environment Agency Whistleblower

Inside the Environment Agency 2014 - Exposing the Waste

Even more Environment Agency Whistleblowers blowing the lid:

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Environment Agency Denying Abuses

Inside the Environment Agency 2014 - Exposing the Waste

It is becoming clear from news reports into these issues at the Environment Agency that they have decided to use the denial strategy. I spent the last six months of my employment within the EA raising these issues to senior management who found it more convenient to sweep it under the carpet - the EA is VERY cautious about it's PR. Even earlier than this I questioned these practices (abuse of flexi time/holiday system, the lack of oversight/action by team leaders, along with the questionable practices by a number of Environment Officers - racial profiling, boosting of incidents rates and regulatory tactics that amounted to bullying/harassment of operators).
Since that time, friends still inside have commented that these practices are still continuing unabated. Why? Others have finally come out in support and given their experiences. These issues are predominantly in front-line positions - Environmental Management (Environment Officers/Team leaders) and in the Flood Management (Flood Officers/Team leaders) teams. There is practically NO oversight of the activities of individuals in these areas. There is EXCESSIVE POWERS and FREEDOM to do whatever they feel, which has resulted in this astonishing abuse and waste.
I need not mention the CUSHY Grade 5 jobbers earning £31k-40k+ with lots of extras on top, but exclaim how easy they have it with little real work to do, absolutely ZERO oversight (even compared to grade 3/4 EOs and FOs) and with little frontline duties.
In total, the Environment Agency’s current profile contains 11,915 staff. Grades 4 and 5 comprise the majority of Environment Agency staff with 52% of staff between them. Only 1.2% of staff is in the highest grade group (Executive Managers). The EA bulges at the middle with staff that claim to be specialists who are unable to actually work on the frontline - I and many others have experienced this and continue to expose this fundamental weakness.
These issues have been raised to the relevant MPs and Executives, yet even these most senior of people still have not taken this as an opportunity to review these areas and confirm for themselves, or they have chosen to ignore the issues in order to avoid embarrassment.
How can one raise formal complaints (as happened internally), if it is the very same people who are in close cahoots with the perpetrators, and ultimately responsible for the current system that is being abused?
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More Environment Agency Staff Experiences #3

Inside the Environment Agency 2014 - Exposing the Waste

We have even more EA staff members posting their experiences:
Waterman comments: "25 years in flood risk and drainage with EA and predecessors and I recognise many of the administrative failings. As a manager,to challenge staff abuse of systems is often such an HR struggle due to the complex process with little prospect of an effective outcome. As a result lazy so and so's continue to get away with it. As a TL in Devon I took on a team where I was told by my staff that I couldn't make them go on standby, they had a right to their 13 flexi days. Didn't have to let me know where they were or what they were doing, claimed harassment when I rang to contact them for operational needs and bullied more compliant colleagues. The organisation is tick box and process obsessed to the point where it is not possible to make common sense decisions. Someone needs to tell the emperor that he is naked!"
Waster comments: "I was an EA officer for 10 years and during that time no-one ever verified my time recording - it was an admin task that was bodged together every fortnight . The IBIS system was painful to use and on ocasion took a couple of hours to populate with useless data. All so someone in a higher paid position could analyse the useless data for useless reporting? Similarly no -one ever verified my mileage claims or compared it against the time recording . In the 'good old days' when you were allowed to use your own vehicle and reclaim mileage it would have been easy to rack up significant extra mileage claims - payback on lease car rates would make £90-£100 per month very difficult though.....seems doubtful. The flexible working regime is something i do miss - and with no real monitoring of comings and goings it was ripe for abuse(should you be so inclined) . For those of us who worked hard it was soul destroying watching some of the staff cruise in and out at will and still take their allocation of 13 days flexi per year - despite never managing a 37.5 hr week.. What isnt mentioned is the Working From Home phenomena that is supported by the EA. Some staff are literally raising families while supposedly WFH. Attending the office 1 day a week (sometimes) while working at home with 2 under 5's for the other 3/4 days. Staff unable to attend incidents at regulated sites because they cant be contacted - as they at school with the kids or in the shops... yep. There are great, hard-working and commited people at the EA- some are fantastic - and i guess you would find this in any organisation of this size. But all the above is common knowledge/ a joke within the organisation and change is required."
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