Newsletter of the Interim Environmental Protection Assessor (IEPAW) for Wales: Autumn 2025

A lot has happened over the last few months including some changes to our IEPAW team. Nerys Llewelyn Jones stepped down as Interim Assessor at the end of February. Nerys ably guided the organisation over the last 4 years and has built an excellent network of stakeholders. We were very sad to see her go. Lynda Warren took over as the Interim Assessor from 1 March and we were delighted to welcome John Henderson as a new Deputy Interim Assessor. John is a solicitor and environmental advocate, aiming to use environmental law to benefit both citizens and the environment. He has a farming background and continues to have an active role in a regenerative farming project in Ceredigion. Our other Deputy Interim Assessor, Anna Heslop, has also stepped down to take up an exciting new post with Client Earth. We wish her well in her new role. The process of recruiting a replacement Deputy is underway. There are also ongoing changes to our Secretariat Team.

We have been extremely busy despite the upheaval these changes have caused. We have published three reports and have made full use of opportunities to meet and engage with stakeholders. We also took part in the first meeting between the European Commission and the UK’s supervisory bodies to discuss and co-operate on enforcement and monitoring of environmental laws, under the trade agreement which follows Brexit.

We published our report on the Protection of Hedgerows in Wales earlier in the summer. 

We were delighted to welcome stakeholders to a lively discussion at the Royal Welsh Show where our expert panel talked about the state of Hedgerows in Wales and the measures we can take to improve them. We’d like to thank Geraint Davies, Eifiona Williams, Nicolas Turner and Rhianne Williams who joined Lynda on the panel, as well as all the people who came along to the event and asked questions.

We produced a report on the lessons learned in the first few years of the IEPAW, in response to a recommendation from the Senedd’s Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee (CCEIC). This report makes a number of recommendations to help inform the transition to a permanent governance body as envisaged in the Environment (Principles, Governance and Biodiversity Targets) (Wales) Bill. You can read the report here. In July we provided evidence on the Bill to the CCEIC alongside our colleagues from the Office of Environmental Protection and Environmental Standards Scotland.

We have also published our Annual Report for the year to February 2025. This gives an overview of the progress on all of our submissions as well as our activities during the year.

We are currently finalising our reports on the Protection of Trees and Woodlands, Protected Sites and Wastewater Collection and Treatment and hope to publish these shortly. Given significant developments in Welsh Government policy in the last year or so, including the Sustainable Farming Scheme and the Independent Water Commission’s Review of the Water Sector in England and Wales, it has been necessary to revisit some of the conclusions and recommendations in the reports to ensure they are complete and capture the current landscape accurately.

We are grateful for the patience of many who have been eagerly awaiting the publication of these pieces of work.

When we started our investigation into water quality, we decided to exclude consideration of agricultural pollution because we thought it would be better to wait until the Welsh Government’s independent review of the Water Resources (Control of Agricultural Pollution) (Wales) Regulations 2021 had been completed. Several of our stakeholders were disappointed at our decision. The Review has now been published, and we are considering whether there is still a need for us to proceed with a report on agricultural pollution. We have asked stakeholders for their views and would welcome any comments which should be sent to IEPAW@gov.wales.

In the springtime, we were welcomed in Crai for a discussion about water pollution, run off and regenerative farming approaches. We were joined by representatives from NRW, Dŵr Cymru, the Usk Catchment Partnership and representatives from the local farming community for presentations on how farmers in the Usk Catchment are working to develop more sustainable farming practices that minimise environmental impacts. We were also treated to a presentation from Sandra Esteves of the University of South Wales on her research on nutrient recovery technology 

We are grateful to Keri Davies for organising our visit and to his community for taking the time to meet with us. Keri is passionate about sustainable farming. He has spent years working as a sheep and dairy farmer on practices that minimise his environmental impact and regenerate the area within which he lives and works. He has built a considerable network of partners including the Usk Catchment Partnership, Dŵr Cymru and NRW.

We will be holding our second expert roundtable event in Cardiff in October and have invited leading voices on the emerging issue of contaminated lank in the UK. This discussion will further the work we are planning to do on the subject in the coming months. 

We also plan to hold another Stakeholder in-person Event in Cardiff in November. The main topics will be a follow up session on contaminated land and discussions on protected sites, but we would welcome suggestions for other topics to be considered at this event too.

If you wish to contact us, please email IEPAW@gov.wales. If you have concerns about the functioning of environmental law in Wales, find information on how to raise your concern by searching: IEPAW