Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds backed the move today, telling LBC stripping him of the gong should be \u2018seriously considered\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has been some really bad practice both in water companies and we\u2019ve seen poor leadership in our regulators.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Environment Agency is under new leadership. It\u2019s horrific what\u2019s been happening, we\u2019ve had record levels of pollution in our waterways,” she said.<\/p>\n
A petition calling for Sir James Bevan to be stripped of the honour has attracted almost 5,000 signatures since it was launched last week.<\/p>\n
He ran the agency from 2015 until March 2023. During his tenure there was a reduction in water quality monitoring and he has been accused of gagging staff from speaking out.<\/p>\n
His track record was scrutinised in the Channel 4 docuseries Dirty Water, which depicted Sir James praising the practice of \u201coperator self-monitoring\u201d which means water companies could \u2018mark their own homework\u2019.<\/p>\n
He also sent an email to employees saying that staff risked being sacked if they criticised or discredited the Environment Agency.<\/p>\n
Carly Hardwidge, who set up the petition, said: \u201cRevoking the knighthood from Sir James would send a powerful message. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis action would restore the public\u2019s faith in our honours system and reinforce the laudable aims of environmental accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n
Feargal Sharkey, the veteran water campaigner, backed the petition, saying: \u201cI\u2019d have to support the idea that he needs his knighthood removed because I can think of no reason why he should have ever earned it nor be allowed to retain it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0Sir James has gone on to be a non-executive director at Welsh Water as well as a trustee of the Canal and Rivers Trust.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week Welsh Water was hit with a \u00a344.7m penalty following breaches in the supplier\u2019s sewage network.<\/p>\n
Alistair Carmichael, the head of the Environment Committee, said: \u201cA revolving door where people can move easily from being poachers to gamekeepers serves only to make that problem worse. <\/p>\n
“We will know if the Government is serious about changing the culture of the industry if, when they set up their new regulator, they take steps to lock that revolving door.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Welsh Water said: \u201cWe appointed Sir James Bevan as a non-executive director in February 2025 following a rigorous search and appointment process.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Channel 4 programme is a television drama based on historical events relating to regulatory matters in England. Some dialogue, characters and scenes have been \u2018recreated\u2019 for the purposes of dramatisation. The portrayal of Sir James Bevan does not reflect the experience of the board since his appointment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds backed the move today, telling LBC stripping him of the gong should be \u2018seriously…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-842112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116271034222701773","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}