Robert Forrester has backed calls for former chief executive Sir James Bevan to be stripped of his knighthood.
Regulators at the Environment Agency turned a blind eye to water companies dumping sewage, a whistleblower has told LBC.
Robert Forrester, a former Environment Agency employee who for years secretly documented the failings, has joined calls for former chief executive Sir James Bevan to be stripped of his knighthood.
Mr Forrester told LBC's Tom Swarbrick prior to Sir James taking over leadership, "we'd have a pretty good regulatory process, investigate most incidents, attend them, have the good prosecution deterrence effect".
However, he said "that started to erode away", explaining that attendance started to drop off and processes were put in place that bypassed regulation.
He said: "So prosecutions were getting dropped. Monitoring was cut in half as officers would see discouragement from going out on site and encouragement to give leeway to the water companies."
Tom questioned who was discouraging officers from investigations, to which Mr Forrester claimed: "It was immediate management, no doubt drip-fed through from senior leadership."
He recalled: "We're in a position where water companies would ring their incidents in several hours after it happened. So, therefore, management would say it's not much point going out now the evidence is...
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