Welcome to the Environment Agency’s online consultation hub

We consulted on the proposed new regulations that are designed to protect salmon and sea trout stocks in the River Severn as well as those stocks on the River Usk and Wye which contribute adult salmon that support the Severn estuary net fishery. We provided information on the salmon stock assessment, preferred fishery management options, technical case. Responses could be submitted online, by email or by post.

The public consultation on the new proposed regulations ran for a period of one month from March to April 2021.

The consultation resulted in 111 representations being made directly to the Environment Agency and Defra. Of those representations 40 fully supported all the proposed measures, while 58* objected to one or more elements of the proposed measures. We also received 10 “Don’t know” and 2 “not answered” to all elements, these are not included as either objection or support.

(*an objection response received through the online consultation portal and as a written objection will count as 1 objection overall.)

The response document aims to reply to the objections and representations raised through the public consultation process. The document draws on all representations received and is intended to clarify specific data used and decisions taken in formulating the proposed new regulations. It was circulated on 14 May 2021 to all those who responded.

Next steps

The final decision regarding the implementation of the NLO and rod and net fishery byelaw measures will be made by the Fisheries Minister, the Right Hon Victoria Prentis MP, after full consideration of the technical case, consultation responses and legal obligations relating to statutory conservation designations. 

The Minister has noted that upon receiving the package of measures submitted to Defra officials by the EA, she will weigh up all the facts, the objections received, support for the schemes and both economic and conservation assessments. She will then decide whether the measures are appropriate, and an announcement will be made on the outcome of that decision.

We asked for your opinions and comments on our proposed classification of water stressed areas in England for the purpose of compulsory metering.

We received 54 responses in total. Of these responses, 28 were from individuals, 9 were from water companies, 8 were from environmental groups and charities, 7 were from public or nationally representative bodies and 2 were from businesses. The responses included a range of comments and views which have been summarised in the consultation response document.

Having reviewed the evidence and all consultation responses we carried out some more tests to check the results. We wrote to the Secretary of State with our advice on water stress and he determined the following areas will be classified as areas of serious water stress: 

• Cambridge Water
• Portsmouth Water
• South Staffordshire Water
• Severn Trent Water – excluding Chester zone
• Veolia Water
• Wessex Water
• South West Water – Bournemouth
• South West Water – Isles of Scilly

This consultation was for the Transboundary Impact Assessment (TIA) submitted by FCC Recycling (UK) Ltd as part of their application to vary their radioactive substances activity permit for the Lillyhall Landfill site in West Cumbria. The consultation took place from 4 February 2021 to 5 March 2021. It provided the opportunity for the public, professional bodies and stakeholders to provide comments on the TIA.

This was in addition to the consultation on the full application to vary the Lillyhall landfill site permit, which took place from 4 March 2019 to 6 May 2019.

We received zero responses to the TIA consultation. Therefore we have not produced a summary of consultation responses document, as we have done for the consultation on the full application to vary the Lillyhall landfill site permit.

We have now reached our final decision on this application and issued the permit variation on 15 July 2021.

A copy of all the documents relevant to this permit variation, including the permit, variation and decision document, can be found by visiting the original consultation ‘Lillyhall Landfill Site RSA Permit Variation’ - Please see link below.