Northern Ireland minister rejects call for independent environment agency

Northern Ireland's environment minister Arlene Foster has rejected calls to set up an independent environment agency for the province like the two bodies established on the UK mainland.

The creation of a separate agency was the central recommendation of an independent review, chaired by Professor Tom Burke, which last year proposed a transfer of environment-related responsibilities from a number of Government departments to the NI Department of the Environment and the creation of an independent agency.

Foster told the Northern Ireland Assembly that there were both constitutional and practical reasons why the transfer of functions was inappropriate at this juncture. She said any fundamental restructuring of responsibilities between departments should be left until a promised cross-Government review due by 2011.

She also said that her party "took the role of environmental governance too seriously to externalise the organisation into an outside agency".

She added: "I am opposed to the setting up of yet more quangos where unelected people take decisions on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland. I, along with my Executive colleagues will make the decisions that will be scrutinised by this House and by the [Assembly's] Environment Committee."

Instead of creating a separate body Foster said the existing Environment and Heritage Service (EHS) would be rebranded and relaunched later this summer as the Environment Agency.

The minister also announced a Better Regulation programme to strengthen environmental regulations (including a Better Regulation Board), structural change and plans for a White Paper on the environment.

The EHS is the largest agency within the Department of the Environment with approximately 700 staff. It takes the lead in advising on, and in implementing, the Government's environmental policy and strategy in Northern Ireland. The agency's overall aims are to protect and conserve Northern Ireland's natural heritage and built environment, to control pollution and to promote the wider appreciation of the environment and best environmental practices.

Foster promised there would be "clear blue water" between the role of the core department as policy maker and legislator and the role of the agency as "protector, regulator and enforcer".

Environmental groups in the Province have warned they may mount a legal challenge to the Government's decision.

Foster pointed to her department's review of the planning system and a series of high-profile planning reforms now in the pipeline as evidence of the government's commitment to ending the over-centralised governance of the Province.

Roger Milne

29 May 2008