Parliament gave Britain's environmental watchdog the power to drag a government department to court for breaking the law. Six years after one deadline passed, it is still deciding what to do about it.
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
In short. The Environment Act 2021 gave England a legally binding target to halt the decline in species abundance by 2030, and a new watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection, with a graduated power to take a government department to court for breaking environmental law. The OEP's own January 2026 report found the government "largely off track" on 9 of the Act's 13 statutory targets. The one case where OEP has actually used its enforcement power against a missed deadline, the marine environment, shows why: the deadline passed in December 2020, OEP announced an investigation in January 2025, issued its first formal notice in September 2025, and, a year later, has still not said what happens next. Three documented mistakes: four stars.
The Environment Act 2021 was sold as a break from the old model, where environmental protection depended on European Union law and a European Commission willing to enforce it. In its place, Parliament wrote a duty to set long-term, numerically measurable targets [1] and created an independent body, the Office for Environmental Protection, to hold government to those targets the way the Commission once held it to EU law [2]. Both halves of that promise, the target and the enforcer, are now old enough to have a track record. The record is not a debate about intentions. It is a set of dates.
The claims, tested
| The Act's own words | What the record actually shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Section 1(4) requires every target to specify "a standard to be achieved, which must be capable of being objectively measured, and a date by which it is to be achieved" [1]. Section 3 sets the flagship "species abundance target," fixed to 31 December 2030, and requires the Secretary of State to be satisfied that meeting it "would halt a decline in the abundance of species" [3] | Government's own tracked measure of that decline, the England biodiversity indicator on relative species abundance, updated 25 February 2026 with data to 2023, shows the index "changing from 66 in 2017 to 67 in 2023," itself "67% of its 1970 value" [4]. Separately, the OEP's fourth statutory progress report, published 13 January 2026, found "good progress" on 4 of the Act's 13 statutory targets, "mixed progress" on 7 and "limited progress" on 2 [5] | The target is specific and dated, exactly as the Act requires. Six years into a ten-year countdown, the government's own indicator of the thing the target exists to fix has moved from 66 to 67, not the recovery a "halt the decline" target implies |
| Sections 35, 36 and 38 give the OEP a three-stage power over a public authority it suspects of a serious failure to comply with environmental law: an information notice giving up to two months to respond [6], a decision notice setting out required remedial steps, and, ultimately, an environmental review in the High Court, where the court "may grant any remedy that could be granted by it on a judicial review other than damages" [7] | The one marine target where OEP has used this power: the statutory deadline for English waters to reach Good Environmental Status under the Marine Strategy Regulations 2010 passed on 31 December 2020. OEP's own account: it publicly announced an investigation on 8 January 2025, triggered by a second missed deadline, "the deadline for an updated report on the UK Marine Strategy passed on 20 December 2024, with no update appearing" [8]. It issued its first formal information notice on 19 September 2025, giving Defra two months to respond, adding "we will consider its response before deciding next steps" [9]. No decision notice or environmental review has been published since | The enforcement chain is real and, on paper, ends in a genuine court remedy. On the only case tested against a missed deadline, it took just over four years to reach the first formal step, and a year after that step, has not moved to the second |
| Government's own 16 July 2026 response to the OEP's January 2026 report states it "accepts the majority of the recommendations in the OEP's report, either fully or in part," addressing all 54 [10] | In the same document, government records: "The OEP's assessment covers progress from April 2024 to March 2025, prior to the publication of the revised EIP in December 2025" [10] | Acceptance is genuine on paper. But the plan being marked is, by the government's own account, already superseded by the time the mark is delivered, so no OEP verdict is ever timed to the plan actually in force |
The mistakes, counted
The flagship target's own tracked indicator has not moved in the direction the target requires (1). Section 3 fixes the species abundance target to 31 December 2030 and conditions it on halting a decline [3]. The government's own relative-abundance indicator, last updated 25 February 2026, records the index at 67% of its 1970 value in 2023, against 66% in 2017 [4]. Six years into the ten-year window the Act allowed, the number the target is built around has been essentially flat at a level two-thirds below where it started, not recovering.
The one enforcement case tested against a missed deadline has taken years to reach even the first formal step (2). The Good Environmental Status deadline for English marine waters passed on 31 December 2020 under the Marine Strategy Regulations 2010. OEP did not announce an investigation until 8 January 2025, after a second deadline was also missed [8], and did not issue its first information notice under section 35 until 19 September 2025 [9]. A year on, there is no published decision notice and no environmental review. Almost six years after the deadline that started the clock, the case has not reached the second of three enforcement stages.
Even a completed environmental review cannot compensate for the years lost getting there (3). Section 38 caps the court's remedy at what could be granted "on a judicial review other than damages" [7], a declaration or an order, never money. Layered on top of that, the government's own July 2026 response confirms that OEP's most recent formal verdict on the wider Environmental Improvement Plan already assesses a plan superseded in December 2025 [10]. The two gaps compound: enforcement is slow, and even the periodic scorecard is always marking a version of the plan that has already been replaced.
Credit where due
OEP did not confine itself to another annual report on the marine target: it opened a real investigation and issued a real statutory notice, the kind of action the Act's critics have long said the watchdog was reluctant to use [8] [9]. Government's July 2026 response engages point by point across all 54 of OEP's recommendations rather than dismissing them, and volunteers the timing gap between the assessment period and the revised EIP rather than glossing over it [10]. And OEP's own count shows genuine, if slow, improvement: of the Act's 13 statutory targets, more now show good progress and fewer show limited progress than in the report a year earlier [5].
Verdict
Four stars, from three documented mistakes. The Environment Act 2021 did what a lot of framework legislation does well: it wrote a specific, dated, measurable target into law, and built a watchdog with a real court remedy behind it. What the record after nearly six years shows is a gap between that architecture and its pace. The number the flagship target is meant to move has barely moved. The one enforcement case OEP has actually run against a missed deadline took over four years to produce a first letter, and a year after that letter, has produced nothing further that is public. None of that means the Act is empty. It means that on the timeline that matters, a rolling three-year gap between a missed deadline and any visible consequence, 2030 will arrive for some targets before the mechanism built to catch a missed one has finished its first case.
Sources
- Environment Act 2021, section 1, legislation.gov.uk
- What we do, Office for Environmental Protection
- Environment Act 2021, section 3, legislation.gov.uk
- England biodiversity indicators: status of all-species relative abundance, updated 25 February 2026, GOV.UK / Defra
- Actions now will determine whether key 2030 environmental targets are met, says OEP report on EIP progress, Office for Environmental Protection, 13 January 2026
- Environment Act 2021, section 35, legislation.gov.uk
- Environment Act 2021, section 38, legislation.gov.uk
- OEP launches investigation into a suspected failure by Defra to take the necessary measures to achieve Good Environmental Status of marine waters, Office for Environmental Protection, 8 January 2025
- OEP identifies possible failures to comply with environmental law over marine target, Office for Environmental Protection, 19 September 2025
- Government response to January 2026 Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) report on EIP progress from 2024 to 2025, 16 July 2026, GOV.UK / Defra