I have never known morale in the Environment Agency fall so low

I’ve worked at the EA for 24 years in permitting and front line regulatory functions. For the last 14 years my job has been assessing environmental compliance at large industrial installations in the South West of England, including major landfill sites, and food manufacturing facilities.

I am a criminal investigator responsible for bringing polluters to justice and have achieved multiple convictions for serious pollution offences by nationally significant companies, with national press coverage. Where appropriate I intervene using statutory powers to ensure communities are protected from amenity pollution (especially odour, and noise), and that industrial emissions to rivers are tightly controlled to minimise adverse impact.

In all this time I have never known morale in the Environment Agency fall so low.

The effect of year-on-year restriction of pay awards since 2010 under the civil service pay remit guidance has slashed the value of officers’ pay. Earlier this year I worked out that to catch up with CPI we’d need a 23% pay rise, and to catch up with RPI it’s an unbelievable 39% hike. With CPI inflation running at around 10% this autumn the EA is imposing the 2022 award, and which trade union members have voted to reject, the consolidated element of which is worth 2% plus £345.

The pay crisis has become an emergency in the last couple of years, with steep rises in inflation rapidly eroding our spending power. For many staff there is now too much month left at the end of the money. Nobody works at the Environment Agency to get rich, but you expect to be able to live with dignity and pay your bills. And if you are missing £700 in your payslip every month seeing your pay increase by less than £50/month after stoppages is frankly an insult. Since when did it become OK to get poorer every year?

There is less and less to keep skilled staff at the Environment Agency now, and more staff are leaving for much better paid jobs either in private consultancy, at water companies or other private industries, or even in entirely unrelated sectors.

It’s almost impossible now to recruit experienced staff to replace those who have left, because the pay offer is so poor. This means that inexperienced staff join on the same salaries as those with often decades of experience, who are then expected to help train the new recruits. In some cases there are no applicants for skilled jobs, which tells you everything about the inadequacy of what’s on offer.

My own circumstances are that I’m the sole earner in my family. My wife is unable to work because of long term illness, and outside of work I am a carer. So I am very exposed to the effects of falling pay value, and it would be very hard for me to accommodate a second job, which some of my colleagues have been forced into.

When I started this job I could manage my finances OK, albeit there wasn’t much spare, so I’m used to a very modest lifestyle. It has got harder and harder over the last decade to balance my income with my outgoings, and now it’s completely impossible. I now have several hundred pounds a month going out more than I’ve got coming in, even though I have stopped virtually all non-essential spending years ago. There are no holidays, no trips to the cinema, no pub lunches, no TV subscriptions. I can’t afford petrol to drive to see friends and family, including my increasingly frail elderly parents for whom I also have a caring responsibility.

It’s very hard to buy essentials like uniform and PE kit for my son at school, and I can’t afford for him to do any extra-curricular activities like music lessons or sports clubs. As he grows up he won’t get these chances again. I’ve stopped all my hobbies, which aren’t expensive, but which have become totally unaffordable. My two night storage heaters will be used very sparingly this winter.

I have no savings, with an increasing balance on credit cards, continually shuffling debt to find a low interest rate, with vanishing hope of ever being able to pay it off. My mental health is suffering more and more, I am feeling completely unvalued, betrayed, and in despair of the debt spiral I now find myself in. I now find myself in a position of burnout, frequently suffering low mood and anxiety episodes, and disrupted sleep, all brought on by exhaustion and lack of hope of being able to resolve the unsustainable financial situation that has been forced on me.

I am approaching 50, a professional skilled worker with a heavy responsibility for regulating large scale industries with the greatest pollution risk, whose project values are frequently in the tens and hundreds of millions of pounds, and I’m the last line of defence for communities and rivers impacted by industrial pollution, and I can’t pay my bills and live with dignity. This is a very long way from the expectations I had when I joined the Environment Agency. I know I’m not alone and I know many are in much worse positions than I am.

Those in charge at the agency keep congratulating us on our efforts and achievements but it’s sounding increasingly hollow because they’ve not been able to do anything to push back against the government’s centrally imposed pay restrictions. It’s a great wheeze for the government to set limits on the value of pay awards before employers can start negotiating pay with trade unions – it makes a complete mockery of the Environment Agency’s commitment to collective bargaining on pay.

The last thing I want to do is to have to take industrial action, but I feel forced into doing so by the government’s approach to under-funding the Environment Agency, and imposing real terms pay cuts on the staff, which is having such a detrimental impact on workers, and hobbling the operational ability of the agency.

I voted yes to action short of a strike, and yes to strike action. Enough is enough. This has to end before we lose a whole generation of environmental professionals, and before the EA falls apart completely.

Prospect recently balloted members at the Environment Agency over pay. 67% voted in favour of strike action, 92% voted in favour of action short of strike.