1 week Ago By Lucie Heath
The Government department responsible for protecting Britain’s rivers and nature has been left “fighting fires” as budget cuts and low morale are forcing hundreds of environmental experts out of their jobs, according to insiders.Around 600 jobs are being cut within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and its agencies, sparking fears of a brain drain of experts in fields such as flooding and farming from government.Environmental groups say Defra is already struggling to fulfil its legal duties, with hundreds of protected sites not being visited in over a decade.
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addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }Officials working within the department told The i Paper morale has been hit by low pay, as well as attacks by the Prime Minister and Chancellor, suggesting Defra civil servants are “blockers” stifling economic growth.Six hundred jobs cut at Natural England and DefraLast month The i Paper revealed that at least 200 jobs are being axed at Natural England, the watchdog responsible for monitoring England’s protected sites and assessing the environmental impact of planning applications.It has also emerged that 400 jobs – around six per cent of the total workforce – will be lost within Defra itself, as part of the Government’s drive to slash civil service costs.
Initially both bodies are looking to reduce their headcount via a ‘voluntary exit’ scheme, which allows employees to apply to leave their job in exchange for a severance package.if(window.adverts) { window.
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adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }As it stands, Defra and Natural England are the only employers who have started this process, but sources said similar schemes could soon be initiated at other Defra quangos, including the Forestry Commission and Rural Payments Agency. The Peak District National Park Authority has said it is likely to make redundancies and more national parks are expected to follow.
Department heads are currently in the process of assessing the voluntary exit applications, but it is understood the Defra scheme was oversubscribed, meaning more than 400 people applied to leave. This includes people nearing the age of retirement, some of whom have been offered up to £70,000 to leave their position. #color-context-related-article-3569396 {--inews-color-primary: #E33A11;--inews-color-secondary: #F7F3EF;--inews-color-tertiary: #E33A11;} Read Next square NEWS .
inews__post__label__save-britains-rivers{background-color: #5ba1d4;color: #ffffff;}Save Britain's Rivers'Farmers like me want to save polluted rivers, but Labour is making it impossible'Read MoreWhile the Government has the right to refuse applications from anyone whose expertise is considered too important to lose, people within the department said there are concerns that many experienced specialists will be leaving.A government spokesperson said Defra’s headcount “has more than quadrupled since 2016” and that the cuts were to ensure the department was “more agile and productive”.However, the increases to Defra’s workforce have been largely due to Brexit as the department took over functions previously performed by the EU, most notably farming subsidies that account for around half of the department’s day-to-day spending.
One Defra employee told The i Paper the department has already lost a lot of generalist positions through austerity and previous recruitment freezes, meaning many of those left are considered experts within their field. if(window.adverts) { window.
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adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l2"}); }“You’ve got to remember that we’ve gone through austerity and we’ve already gone through recruitment freezes so it’s not like there’s any fat left to trim,” they said. “It’s getting rid of people with expertise and have unique understandings of how things work, be that processes, relationships with stakeholders or an understanding of environmental issues.
”‘There’s constant churn’Retention is already a problem within Defra and the environmental bodies it sponsors; staff morale and workload has been a regular topic of conversation at Natural England board meetings in recent months. “On headcount, we know the Government’s fallen far behind on things like monitoring of protected sites, many of which haven’t been visited in the past decade,” said Richard Benwell, CEO at Wildlife and Countryside Link, a network of more than 80 nature organisations.Benwell said officials are also struggling “in terms of their capacity to go out and enforce the law when it comes to things like degradation of protected species, destruction of protected habitats or indeed pollution of rivers”.
An employee within one Defra quango told The i Paper low pay was driving many young environmentalists out of government, creating a “constant churn”.They said graduates often come to work for regulators straight out of university but after a few years of training get “poached” by industries such as development or offshore wind, where they earn better salaries working as consultants helping projects gain planning permission. if(window.
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adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l3"}); }Staff at Defra’s headquarters in Whitehall are braced for the departure of some of their most experienced colleagues (Photo: iStock Editorial)Fran Heathcote, General Secretary at the Public and Commercial Services Union, said their members within Defra “are committed to protecting the environment but a lack of resources means the department is left fighting fires rather than responding proactively to threats brought on by climate change”.
Benwell said job cuts would mean Defra will struggle to properly deliver new policies being introduced by the Government, such as the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which aims to streamline regulations for developers to make it easier to build.Under the bill Natural England will be responsible for overseeing a Nature Restoration Fund, that will see developers fund green projects to mitigate the environmental impact of their scheme. Defra is also responsible for delivering the Government’s Environmental Improvement Plan, designed to meet the UK’s legally binding target of halting the decline of nature by 2030.
“If we’re being asked to do that on bargain basement civil service capacity, then that’s going to open up a much bigger risk of inappropriate development, of second rate plans going through,” Benwell said.Under attack in war on ‘blockers’Shortly after coming into post last July, the Environment Secretary Steve Reed set out to transform Defra into a ‘growth’ department that aligns with the Government’s central economic mission.This included initiating a review of environmental regulators, spearheaded by former No 10 advisor to Gordon Brown, Dan Corry, to look at how the department could better drive economic growth.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l4"}); }While many environmentalists initially rankled at the ‘growth’ rhetoric, some have welcomed the regulatory shake-up, accepting the current system is convoluted.However, there is a nervousness around how these reviews will be implemented and that ‘streamling’ regulations becomes code for dumping environmental protections.#color-context-related-article-3613875 {--inews-color-primary: #E33A11;--inews-color-secondary: #F7F3EF;--inews-color-tertiary: #E33A11;} Read Next square GREEN ENERGY .
inews__post__label__big-reads{background-color: #0a0a0a;color: #ffffff;}Big ReadSubsidised ‘green’ energy is damaging Britain’s environment – and it's costing millionsRead MoreBenwell said there has been “nuanced and intelligent conversation” happening within Defra in terms of how the environmental and growth agendas can align.However, he said this risks being upended by “unnecessarily adversarial rhetoric that’s coming out of Number 10 and Number 11 that paints responsible environmental decision making as some kind of enemy of growth”.In recent months the Prime Minister and Chancellor have made repeated jabs at environmentalists and Defra civil servants who have been painted as “blockers” to development.
“The risk is that that one dimensional caricature that’s being doodled into existence by number 10 drives policy and decision making,” Benwell said. One Defra employee told The i Paper an initial feeling of optimism within the department when Labour came to power, has quickly diminished.if(window.
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adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l5"}); }“That was back in July and August, since then we’ve had press releases that ‘we’re happy in the tepid bath waters of managed decline’ and threats of cuts,” they said, adding it feels like “going back to a slightly different version of the previous government, which is basically putting the problems of the current administration on the department”.
Fears of further cuts Hanging over all of this is the Chancellor’s Spending Review, which will be published in June, setting out departmental budgets in the next three years.Rachel Reeves has already laid the ground for cuts as she tries to stick within her self-imposed fiscal rules during an increasingly challenging time for the global economy.Environment secretary Steve Reed has vowed that his department will not shackle the Government’s growth agenda (Source: Bloomberg)One of Defra’s largest areas of day-to-day spending is on grants for farmers, accounting for half of the departments total resource spending of £4.
8bn. Ministers stoked fears this budget will be cut when Defra suddenly stopped accepting applications for its flagship scheme, the Sustainable Farming Incentive, last month.Another major area of day-to-day Defra spending is maintenance of flood defences.
The Treasury has already warned that this spending is under review, despite recent figures showing that over 3,000 of England’s most important defences are in disrepair. “I think everybody recognises that there’s a challenging fiscal landscape and that the chancellor has set herself some very stringent rules for her stewardship of public finances,” said Benwell.“Government should be seeing Defra as a foundational department.
.. not as a corner of Whitehall that can be subjected to cuts to save a buck elsewhere.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l6"}); }A Defra spokesperson said: “We are focused on reshaping the British state, so it better delivers on working peoples’ priorities through our Plan for Change.“Defra’s headcount has more than quadrupled since 2016. We want to become more agile and productive, investing more into internal talent while delivering better value for the taxpayer.
”.
