John Barwise talks to former Environment Agency chief executive Paul Leinster
After a career at the Environment Agency spanning 17 years, Paul Leinster stepped down as chief executive on 25 September. Leinster, an IEMA Fellow, joined the regulator in 1998, becoming CEO in 2008. Before leaving his post to join Cranfield University, where he will be professor of environmental assessment and help to develop a strategic centre for atmospheric informatics and emissions technology, Leinster spoke with IEMA member John Barwise about his career and the changing role of the agency.
You arrived at the agency with a chemistry degree and a PhD, having worked at a number of high-profile firms, such as SmithKline Beecham and BP International. How important was it to have this background when you started at the regulator?
I think it gave me the ability to see something from both sides. What we were trying to do in terms of protecting and improving the environment, and then the challenges the businesses face in doing that - I knew what it was like on the other side. A big driver for me in joining the agency was that I'd seen environmental regulation and health and safety legislation in more than 30 countries. And I wanted use the learning from those places to come up with a way [of regulating] that was less bureaucratic but still delivered the protection of people and the environment.
You were at the agency for more than 17 years and had to deal with a wide range of political masters, all with their own agendas for taking the organisation forward. What have been the highs and the lows, and the biggest challenge?
Weather is the biggest challenge. Sometimes it would just be nice to know when there's going to be too much or too little water. I've been an avid follower of weather forecasts; I like to get the long-term datasets on where we are with water resources but extreme weather happens and I often reflect I've seen too many "once in a lifetime" events already. We had the biggest tidal surge on the east coast for 60 years in 2013 and the wettest winter in 2013-14. I remember in 1998 was probably the first floods I'd experienced and since then we've been having regular flooding.
We've also had events like the Buncefield explosion [in 2005]. So the agency introduced something called Think big, act early to ensure it is prepared. It's seldom that you would ever regret opening an incident room, but you would sometimes regret not opening one.
Then we've had to deal with challenges around resources and how you manage those. But for me I don't see them in highs and lows. Rather, I see them as a set of circumstances: some of those we can influence; others we just have to respond to. I always made the best case possible to invest in the work that the agency does because it delivers fantastic value. One accolade I will remember was when I went in front of the public accounts committee and the chair ended the session by saying he'd like to congratulate the agency on demonstrating value for money. That meant a lot.
One of the biggest challenges facing the agency is a cut to its budget. Can it continue to cope?
The role of the chief executive is to maximise the benefits with the available funding. That isn't by working harder and harder, it's by finding better ways of doing things. Over the years, the agency has found ways to reduce some of its process cost - by more than 50% in some cases - by finding smarter ways of doing it.
The agency has four main funding streams and you need to understand them to understand the organisation. The first one is the capital budget. This includes money for flood and coastal risk management activities, and now, for the first time, the agency has a six-year settlement to 2021 for this. That enables the agency to put in place a programme of work. There's also a budget for flood and coastal risk management revenue to fund operating expenditure and that has gone up and down; it went up slightly over the past year. The agency also receives a significant amount of money from its core regulatory work. That is funded by charges from regulating businesses and issuing licences, so, in a way, is protected. Lastly, the agency receives grant-in-aid and that's the bit that has seen the largest reduction. It goes on some of the pollution prevention work the agency does as well as some of its spatial planning and waste crime work.
Over the past two years, the government has given additional money for waste crime. The whole waste industry shifted and changed in the time I was at the agency. When I started, bin lorries collected waste from homes and put it in landfill. Now, the waste licences are more than 80% of all the process industry the agency regulates - a significant number. It is also this strange business, which goes from the highly competent large companies at one end to organised crime at the other.
The scale of the cuts over the past few years, with 3,000 job losses and possibly more to come, is bound to make the remaining agency staff feel more vulnerable. Is this having an adverse effect on motivation and on staff morale?
Along with all of the public sector, there is this feeling of uncertainty at the agency; and the role for the CEO and senior managers is to help people see that the work of the organisation is valued. But the agency is not exempt from the pressures on the public sector. Again, for me, the important thing is that the agency continues to demonstrate that its work is vital for England and vital for the environment. It needs to be protecting people and protecting and improving the environment.
The government's aim to reduce red tape is reducing the number of environmental regulations. Do you think this is a good thing? Are there any risks in taking this approach and how does the agency manage the impact?
I think it's helped. There are checks and balances the agency requires. If you look at the regulatory landscape, the agency scores regulated sites, A being good, F being poor. Some 96% of the sites it regulates score A to C; 4% score D, E or F, where they need to improve. The approach that you use for the 96%, I think, needs to be slightly different from the approach adopted for the poor performers, and the agency needs to strike the right balance. It needs to think about those two groupings and what's the appropriate approach for both, and not think everybody's either good or bad.
If you can make - and I think this is what's happened in the red-tape challenge - the guidance clearer by reducing the amount but not the effect, so somebody can read something and go "oh that's what I need to do", that has to be good. Also, one of the things the agency did in introducing the environmental permitting regulations was to take 40 sets of regulations and directives and create one set of regulations. That has to be good too.
The ultimate aim has to be to do yourself out of a job. If you can get management to be thinking in a sustainable way, you don't need sustainability professionals, at least not in the same way
There's a sense that we're moving towards a more self-regulatory system, for example the pig and poultry assurance scheme and, more recently, the trialling of the environmental permitting regulations assurance scheme for wider businesses under EMS plus. Do you think we are moving now towards a system where businesses are becoming more self-policing and supported by the agency rather than regulated by it?
No, and I think there is a world of difference between being a regulator and a manager. Sometimes, in the past, I think the agency was trying to step into the role of manager, but it is for managers to manage and for regulators to regulate - be the check.
Do I believe in regulation? Absolutely. Regulation has delivered huge benefits for people's health and for the quality of the environment. Emissions and discharges have come down, and pollution incidents reduced. Some sites, unfortunately, are bad neighbours. So how do you get the bad neighbours to become good neighbours? If they won't change the agency will enforce and prosecute.
You mention helping firms to be good neighbours, where the agency can support the local community being affected by a site. Do you see this as a sort of a new development, to bring together stakeholders to make industry part of the community?
When I worked in industry, in some places the community was the main workforce for a particular plant, so there was an automatic link between the two. The agency should have a relationship with the community and with the site, and should not be in the middle. I would love to see every site in the country with a community-liaison panel and people holding the company to account, but that does not mean there is no need to regulate.
It is unlikely that a waste site being run by an organised crime group is going have a community-liaison panel. The agency needs to be stricter and firmer. Companies need to earn autonomy and the right to have a reduced regulatory load. I used to talk about this with industry, which wanted regulators to step back. I agree but we need to make sure that there isn't a gap because, if the regulator steps back, the legitimate industry should step in so that there is no gap in performance.
Many analysts argue that the Paris summit in December is the last chance to reach an agreement on emissions. How optimistic are you that we can reach an international consensus?
There are huge challenges and many can be met by global agreements or individual countries agreeing to take action. I'm optimistic that ways can be found to address these. It's then for governments to take the necessary action.
Given your experience over the past 17 years, would you advise doing any of it differently? Could the agency be a slightly different model from what it is at the moment?
The agency is in a different place from where it was in 1998. A lot of its strengths are stronger now and I'd like to think that I've added something.
There are a couple of areas we need to think about, though. First, what does the regulator look like from a customer point of view or a recipient of services, or those being regulated? I would advise looking at the experiences of the different bodies and groups and see whether the approach being taken is the best way of doing it. The other issue for the agency is to find more ways of working in partnership with other organisations and other bodies, including local authorities: how it works with Public Health England and the NHS in England as well as with bodies like Natural England and the Marine Management Organisation, for example. Do they need to pool resources? They need to think about what it is that they're trying to achieve and what's the best way of deploying resources to deliver the best outcomes as well as how to involve local people in the discussion.
There's been quite a shift with partnership funding for flood risk management, and you know what you're going to get because there's a tariff system and local people also have to decide whether they're going to contribute to it. I think there will be much more of that sort of working.
As a Fellow of IEMA and with your many years of experience at the frontline of environment management, how important is the institute and what advice would you give to the growing number of young professionals?
I encourage people to become part of a professional institute. Certainly, when I was in the early stages of my career, I found it hugely beneficial because it was a network of people. You could learn from them. There were people from different industries and different organisations all coming together with a common purpose. If you happened to be the only professional in your organisation, you could get mentoring; you could ask people for advice and guidance. So professional institutes have a huge role to play. How we get them engaging with young professionals is the trick.
For me, the key bit is how do we get different professions working together to adopt integrated solutions and function in teams to deliver that? And the ultimate aim has to be, and I tried this in different jobs, to do yourself out of a job. If you can get general management to be thinking in a sustainable way, you don't need sustainability professionals, at least not in the same way. They'll be needed to educate, perform specialist functions and drive the agenda. But how do we get environment and sustainability into the core way of working? How do we get environment into business schools? How do we get environment and sustainability into core first degrees?
You've left agency but not the environment profession and are going into academia. Why not just put your feet up now and enjoy a bit of quality time?
I remain passionate. I still have questions in my mind and issues that still need to be addressed. There are still technical issues that need addressing. One thing I want to do is to help turn a good idea into a new way of doing something so we're not just doing things in the way that we used to do. People working in a specific area of research do not always know how to put it into practice. That is something I know how to do. Sometimes the legislation uses techniques and methods that are from years ago. How do we modernise that? And some of that might be hardwired into legislation or directives, so how do you go about it? I think I can help go about changing those into better ways of doing things.
The full interview with Paul Leinster is available to listen to here.
