Date:               15 May 2008 
Embargo:       None

New Environment Agency Chair Welcomed

The Environment Agency has announced that the Rt Hon the Lord Smith of Finsbury is to take over from Sir John Harman as its new Chairman and that the Baroness Young of Old Scone will shortly be standing down as Chief Executive in order to chair the new Care Quality Commission.

Commenting, Dirk Hazell, ESA’s Chief Executive said: “The present Government has already appointed a good chairman and chief executive to the Environment Agency. When Sir John Harman and Barbara Young took over, the Agency was going in the wrong direction: matrix management was proving to be a disaster and the Agency’s notions of environmental regulation were crude. It is not easy to transform the culture and performance of an organisation that had been so dysfunctional and it is a very considerable tribute to both of them that they managed to turn the Agency around. It is has for some years now been progressing in the right direction and has become one of the world's leading environmental regulators."

Mr Hazell added that it is good news for the environment that the Government has appointed to chair the regulator a heavyweight politician like Chris Smith.

Lord Smith, currently Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority, has a background in environmental issues from his time as a former Shadow Labour environment minister and from 1992 to 2007 was president of the Labour Party environmental campaign group SERA with which ESA closely co-operates.

ENDS