Last year Downing Street set out aims to clean contaminated land and water. But has it equipped those responsible for doing it? Natalie Sims, Policy Advisor at the Royal Society of Chemistry, brings us up to speed.
When the Environmental Improvement Plan landed late last year, many working in local government saw a familiar pattern: a strategy with welcome ambition but limited clarity on how that ambition turns into delivery. It acknowledged the scale of chemical pollution – from pesticides and pharmaceuticals to microplastics and PFAS – but left unanswered the uncomfortable question of how the UK would actually tackle contaminants of emerging concern across the varied and often under‑resourced landscapes councils operate in.
Then, more recently, Defra published the UK’s first national PFAS Plan, a comprehensive and evidence-based recognition that forever chemicals’ have seeped into almost every aspect of environmental management – water, soil, waste, drainage, industrial permitting – and yet until now national policy had lacked a coordinated response.
To Defra’s credit, the PFAS Plan is a very positive and long‑needed step. It clearly responds to what scientists, campaigners and responsible industries have been calling for. The government has now committed to action at source, across supply chains and at end of life, and has explicitly recognised the need to support UK innovation to develop PFAS‑free alternatives. That is a crucial shift. As the government’s own announcement put it, this is the first time the UK has set out an integrated framework to understand sources, track pathways and reduce public and environmental exposure to PFAS.
It is also encouraging to see the PFAS Plan commit to what the RSC has campaigned for over many years now: new statutory drinking‑water standards. Ministers have now confirmed a forthcoming consultation on legal limits for PFAS in England’s water supply regulations, which should give regulators far stronger enforcement powers when it comes to a source of PFAS ingestion that people cannot avoid.
Just as important is the recognition that monitoring must extend well beyond drinking water. For the first time, regulators will systematically assess PFAS across estuaries, coastal waters, sediments and invertebrates, giving a much clearer picture of environmental burden and enabling more credible regulatory action. And yet for all this progress, the PFAS Plan – like EIP 2025 before it – leaves unresolved the very issues that matter most to those who must implement it: timelines, accountability, wider mechanisms for enforcement and funding.
Both documents articulate what needs to happen, but neither gives confidence in how it will. Many of the PFAS Plan’s commitments remain high‑level, with no clear delivery milestones and no explanation of how responsibilities will be coordinated across Defra, the Environment Agency, HSE, the Office for Product Safety and Standards, the Drinking Water Inspectorate and devolved regulators. In the absence of clearly defined duties, we run the risk that local authorities are left piecing together inconsistent advice.
Councils already face contaminant‑related decisions in planning, contaminated‑land assessments, environmental permitting, flood‑risk design, procurement and drainage management. Without explicit updated guidance, local authorities are forced to make case‑by‑case judgements with no national steer.
EIP 2025 did acknowledge the need for a more joined‑up approach to chemicals and for regional collaboration via catchment partnerships. But it still sits within a wider regulatory system that has grown fragmented, inconsistent and difficult for councils to turn national promises into practical action.
Funding, in particular, remains conspicuously absent. The PFAS Plan speaks of applying the ‘polluter pays’ principle, but does not clarify how this will happen in practice. Without a mechanism – whether producer responsibility, ring‑fenced charges, or statutory contributions from high‑risk sectors – the reality is that remediation and monitoring costs may fall on water customers, council taxpayers or already‑stretched local budgets. This is especially concerning given the scale of the challenges presented by many contaminants. PFAS are mobile, persistent and expensive to remove once released.
There is also the question of scientific underpinning. A key bottleneck remains — the long‑delayed Committee on Toxicity review of PFAS, which is essential for establishing health‑based guideline values. That review has been running for years, was paused, and has yet to produce the clarity regulators need. Until it is completed — and until the government publishes a firm timetable for doing so – councils and regulators risk being stuck in regulatory limbo, unable to justify consistent thresholds or enforcement decisions.
So where does this leave local government? With both EIP 2025 and the PFAS Plan, the broad direction is unquestionably right, and the RSC strongly welcomes the shift towards evidence‑based regulation, statutory standards and innovation funding. But delivery will depend on the system’s weakest links. And, at the moment, that means enforcement capacity, regulatory clarity and practical guidance for frontline authorities.
Local government now needs:
• Clear statutory guidance on PFAS in planning, contaminated land and permitting
• Transparent, harmonised monitoring frameworks that councils can plug into rather than recreate
• Defined funding mechanisms rooted in the polluter pays principle
• A single point of coordination across regulators, not a maze of overlapping responsibilities
Until these gaps are addressed, the UK risks having strong national ambition without the operational architecture needed to deliver it. And without delivery, neither EIP 2025 nor the PFAS Plan will protect communities in the way they intend.
Image: Scott Rodgerson / Unsplash
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