Environment Agency has nearly halved water-use inspections in last five years

The Environment Agency has slashed its water-use inspections by almost a half over the past five years. Environment Agency officers visited people and businesses with licences to abstract, or take, water from rivers and aquifers 4,539 times in 2018-19, but this dropped to 2,303 inspections in 2022-23, according to data obtained by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations.