Whistleblower! Part 1
- Ash
- 1d
- 6 min read
This is a guest blog, written by Robert Forrester, a former Environment Agency employee who became a whistleblower, played in Channel 4's Dirty Business by Chanel Cresswell, to hide his identity. During production of the factual drama, Rob decided to go public with his identity and remarkable disclosures, and continues to campaign for honesty and integrity to prevail.
Turning on the light.
My first meeting with Laura McCutcheon, one of the producers behind Dirty Business, was in late 2024. I was becoming disillusioned with the lack of media progress in exposing the complicity of the Environment Agency in the growing sewage scandal.
My name is Robert Forrester, and I worked in the Environment Agency for 21 years in water regulation until a few months ago.
As recently as 2024, the Agency was represented as a victim of underfunding, which gave the then CEO, Sir James Bevan, and his leadership team cover to deceive Parliament and the public about what was really going on inside the organisation and the impact, or rather lack of it, on the conduct of water companies.
The underfunding myth became widespread and still lives on in many people's, including politicians' and journalists' minds, when the real truth was not a shortage of funding but one of deliberate under-resourcing of people in key roles by the Environment Agency leadership team. Deliberate decisions from the top.
I was a whistleblower and had been investigating and making public disclosures but concealing my identity for 6 years, and the pressure of doing that was taking its toll on me.
Channel 4's Dirty Business changed all that.
The producers and the TV company were brave enough to shine a light on the ‘capture’ of the Environment Agency (EA) by the water industry and the collusion between it and the water companies. To pass the test for inclusion in Dirty Business, the story had to be rooted in hard evidence, and it was.
After the three episodes aired and coverage of their impact hit the media, the Agency countered it with claims that things were better now under the new leadership.
But that is not what I have seen, and that is why I feel compelled to carry on putting the record straight.
Just as Sir James Bevan hid behind a myth of underfunding that was simply not true, the new leadership team has been hiding behind the failings of the past as if that phase is all over now, when it isn't.
The Agency’s 'new' leadership, CEO Philip Duffy and Chairman Alan Lovell, were appointed in 2023 and 2022 and claim the organisation behaves differently now, but it seems clear to me that the same motivations and strategies remain - to protect the water industry and deceive the public. To manage public perception.
This is not a criticism of the Agency frontline staff who, like some of those depicted in Dirty Business, are doing their best but are just not allowed to succeed; it is a criticism of the leaders of what should be an organisation rooted in integrity. Sadly, although it did once seem that way, that has not been my experience, and certainly not over the past decade.
The Environment Agency became aware that I was a whistleblower in April 2021 when a polluter used my identity to gain leverage with the Agency after he had been given it by someone who had betrayed my trust.
I should have been protected by Whistleblower legislation from ‘dismissal and detriment’, according to the law, but I was suspended, threatened with criminal sanctions, and subjected to a 12-month disciplinary process.
The law - Whistleblowing at work - Acas - see link at the end.
It seemed to me that this was designed to force my resignation and thereby remove me as a threat of more exposure of what was really going on in the Agency.
It almost worked, but for two actions taken by the Agency’s CEO, Sir James Bevan, that made me determined to stay and do the right thing - to get the truth out where it could be seen.
Number one: Whilst suspended, I saw Sir James appear before the Environmental Audit Committee and provide information that can be described as misleading at best. He told the committee that the Agency responds on the ground to the most serious incidents, and if there was a serious pollution incident in a river, the Agency would be there. However, our attendance rate at that time to serious incidents was about 70%.
Sir James also told the committee that the Agency had dealt with the lowest number of serious pollution incidents they had ever recorded and more water companies where at the highest level of performance. However, the Agency had become more reliant on using water company evidence for categorising incidents and discouraged officers from attending such incidents.
A few months later, the Agency ordered officers not to attend minor incidents, which is how the majority of serious incidents are reported to the Agency.
He told the committee that the Agency’s funding for combating water pollution was being reduced but at the time, the budget for the function group that controls all water regulatory activity was £296million, while in 2016/17 it was £216million - an £80M increase. He claimed that the government grant the Agency received for environmental protection work was £40 million when it was actually £94 million.
Source = FOI responses provided below.
He also told the committee that for serious or deliberate pollution, we will always prosecute a company. As an example, I knew this not to be the case due to the dropping of a prosecution in 2019, for which I was the lead officer. This was a Category 1 incident where a company had pumped hazardous waste into a broken sewer to avoid disposal costs. This resulted in polluted groundwater that melted the drinking water pipe for the next-door property resulting in its occupants ingesting carcinogenic substances for several days. It was as serious and deliberate an incident as the Agency would deal with.
Number two: I was still on the fence, wondering whether continuing with the Agency was the right thing to do, when in November 2021 Sir James sent an email to all staff threatening them with serious consequences if they spoke out in public.
The feedback I received from colleagues was that this achieved its objective of silencing frontline staff who, like me, were worried about job security and paying the mortgage, so I believed that there was a risk that if I left, the chance of anyone exposing the truth about the Agency’s actions could go with me. I decided to fight my way back and to continue, starting with disclosing the email from Sir James Bevan to the media.
When I returned to work in around April 2022, it was to a different environment. The Agency was now aware that I was a whistleblower. They could not use this to dismiss me, and the key witness had pulled out of the disciplinary proceedings, but that genie couldn’t go back in the bottle, and the mutual mistrust made life very difficult.
Sir James Bevan appeared confident that his attempts to silence staff had the desired effect and when he appeared again before the Environmental Audit Committee in May 2022 he provided more misleading information.
He told the committee that all serious pollution incidents would receive ‘boots on the ground’, but our attendance rate for serious water company incidents at the time was just 57%.
He also told the committee that this was the first time the Agency had become aware of sewage dumping being a problem. The Agency’s 2012 inspection report for the North West region showed that a number of sewage works belonging to United Utilities were discharging untreated sewage into rivers while failing to treat the required amount of sewage stipulated in their permits.
The report even showed that United Utilities was fined £200,000 for breaches at its Cleator sewage works in Cumbria where “the storm overflow weir had been set deliberately to this lower level”.
The subject was only being discussed by the committee because campaigners had exposed it, not the Agency, even though its staff, my colleagues, had done the work to reveal it.
By this time, I had also initiated tribunal proceedings against the Agency for detrimental treatment of me for whistleblowing, and the response seemed to be to make my working life as difficult as possible.
I was restricted from involvement in any investigative and enforcement work and removed from incident rotas, which meant I would not earn overtime. One of the worst things was that I was forbidden from telling any other staff why these conditions were in place and, if asked, I had to direct them to my line manager, who would tell them it was confidential.
I knew I had to carry on doing what I was sure was right, exposing the truth.
To be continued....
References
Link to the Whistleblowing law https://www.acas.org.uk/whistleblowing-at-work
Guardian Article on United Utilities pollution. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/01/environment-agency-sewage-dumped-england-rivers-leak
Guardian article on threats to staff
Funding FOI request
And if you haven't seen it yet - Dirty Business
Thank you for taking your brave stand, and for holding to it despite all the vitriol poured your way.
Thank you, Robert for your courage. If nothing else at least the public are no longer under the illusion that we can ‘leave it to the environment agency’ to protect our waters. It’s time to renationalise our precious waters systems.
Bravo to Robert for having the courage and integrity to stand up against the vested interests that are only intent on getting as much money out of OUR water industry before they flog it off to someone else 👍
Thank you Robert, for exposing Sir james bevan and what the EA was not doing. Loved Dirty Business, i now hope we will get peolple with willingness, sincerity and integrity to run the agency and hold the water industry to account.
Thank you Robert Forrester.
We don’t know your personal circumstances, however it seems despite the risks to yourself and your family you put “your head above the parapet”. I admire your courage and thank you for your dedication.