The Environment Agency has used powers to impose a Variable Monetary Penalty after Ilchester Estate took more water from the Dorset Frome than it was licensed to do.
Ilchester Estate, located in Dorset, has a licence to abstract water from a spring on the headwaters of the chalk stream Dorset Frome at Evershot. The water is used to supply houses, offices, gardens, and farms that go to make up the Ilchester Estate.
The current annual charge invoiced by the Environment Agency under its charges scheme for the abstraction licence is £120. The estate then sets its own charges for supplying the abstracted water to businesses and residents on the estate.
The licence allows the estate to abstract up to 66.6 cubic metres of water a day, but following an investigation by the Environment Agency, it was found that between December 2022 and July 2023 the authorised licence limit had been exceeded by a total of nearly 7,500 cubic metres, around three Olympic size swimming pools worth of water. Between December 2022 and January 2023 Wessex was officially in a drought.
Now the estate has paid a variable monetary penalty (VMP) of £19,777.69, plus costs of £8,298.60, to the Environment Agency for its breach of the Water Resources Act 1991. The penalty came after the agency had previously warned the estate to stop over abstracting water.
In 2018 the estate was advised by the Environment Agency of how an increase to their permitted abstraction levels could be applied for. Instead, the estate said steps would be taken to reduce the amount of water being taken but amounts abstracted continued to be above the permitted level each year through to 2023.
— Accurate at time of publication | February 2025
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