Unearthed, July 2025

A new Unearthed investigation out this week, in collaboration with DeSmog, reveals how staff shortages at the Environment Agency’s main lab have caused major cuts to the regulator's water pollution monitoring work. 

The EA has paused or cancelled 10,000 planned water quality tests since May this year, and its lab is still not up to full capacity.

We gained access to emails and planning documents that reveal the cuts have hit programmes that track chemical pollution in rivers, lakes and estuaries, and another that monitors the regulator’s local responses to drought. While this testing has been on hold, five English regions have officially gone into drought, after the “driest spring in 132 years”.

The cuts have also affected water industry investigations in various parts of the country, as well as work to monitor protected conservation areas like the River Wye. 

The testing was cancelled after a “significant number” of staff left the “inorganics” team at the EA’s Starcross laboratory in Devon, with “further staff signalling their intention to depart,” according to emails obtained under freedom of information laws.

The ‘inorganics’ team is responsible for testing EA water samples for compounds like nitrates and phosphates, which are critical measures of the impact of pollutants like sewage, as well as a host of other important water quality tests.

You can read the full investigation here.