New higher environmental fines appeal ruling

The Court of Appeal has ruled that the sentence imposed on Thames Water Utilities for allowing untreated sewage to enter a brook running through a nature reserve was proportionate.
Reading crown court fined the company £250,000 in September 2014 in one of the first cases to reflect the sentencing guidelines for environmental offences that came into force on 1 July last year.
The guidelines introduced four categories of offence that relate to the level of harm caused. Also considered is the offender’s culpability – was it deliberate, reckless or negligent, or whether it committed with little or no fault on the part of the organisation.
Thames Water pleaded guilty to allowing sewage to enter The Chases, a nature reserve near Newbury, from an emergency overflow pipe at its Broad Layings sewage pumping station on 2 September 2012. The Environment Agency said the discharge had been caused by a blockage in the pumps at the station on 29 August 2012 and that Thames Water had failed to act on the alarms system to attend and unblock them.
At the earlier hearing, the judge, recorder Arbuthnot, said: “The parties agree that the level of culpability is negligence and with which I agree. With regards to harm I find that this is a category 3 offence but at the severe end.” The starting point for fines for negligent, category 3 offences committed by firms with a turnover of at least £50 million is £60,000, rising to £150,000. The courts, however, can impose financial penalties outside this range for large companies by considering whether the fine is proportionate to the means of the offender.
The court of appeal agreed the fine was proportionate. The judges also referred to Thames Water’s record as a repeat offender, warning: “To bring the message home to the directors and shareholders of organisations which have offended negligently more than once before, a substantial increase in the level of fines, sufficient to have a material impact on the finances of the company as a whole, will ordinarily be appropriate. This may therefore result in fines measured in millions of pounds.”
Anne Brosnan, deputy director of legal services at the Environment Agency, said: “This sentence should act as a deterrent. In fact, the court said that it would have upheld a very substantially higher fine in this case.”