Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

Thank you for your letter dated 27th March 2000 requesting comments on the issues raised in the above study. Please note that these are informal officer observations only.

1g) A lack of resources is a real problem, particularly in local government. All local authorities should have specialist staff - ecologists, archaeologists, foresters, landscape architects, with the budgets to allow them to work properly within their local area. At present this is not the case. Within statutory agencies and advisory bodies too there are problems. For example, English Nature staff are overworked and therefore tend to concentrate on SSSIs and above. The Environment Agency, too, does not have enough people to police waste licences etc.

I hope these limited comments are helpful.

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