1.    The Environment Agency Emergency Hotline

The Environment Agency provides a hotline number which can be used to report environmental pollution incidents relating to air, land and water. The hotline is open 24 hours and covers all regions in England and Wales. It enables people who witness incidents of pollution in their local environment to contact the Agency and report the incident so that local agency staff can be dispatched to deal with the pollution incident swiftly.

This hotline number is promoted on many of the Agency’s internal publication as well as in external publications.

A joint development of this service between the Environment Agency and relevant authorities could prove extremely useful to the development of management responses to pollution incidents within mSAC areas.

2.    Bait Digging, Solway Firth

In 1998, the local newspaper for the Solway Firth area, reported the threat that organised gangs of bait diggers were posing to local species populations. The article suggested that bait diggers were travelling from other areas of the country to collect species and also highlighted the fact that bait collection is banned on many stretches of the North Eastern coastline because of over exploitation. The article finished by offering a contact number to anyone with information regarding this activity.

Although the article was designed to engender local antipathy of outsiders involved in the activity, the provision of a contact number was successful in enabling relevant authorities to gather up to date information on the bait digging issues from local users of the coastline.

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