The Environment Agency is a Government organisation in the UK that comes under the umbrella of the Department for Food and Rural Affairs. It is responsible for the protection and preservation of the environment in the UK, including water pollution, flooding, and industrial pollution prevention and control. It does this generally through the provision of consents or licences, which determine when and how much of something a party is permitted to discharge into the environment, and enforces those licences by means of Environment Officers¹.

The Agency was formed in 1995 out of the dusty remnants of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution and the National Rivers Authority, and a great many of the employees have been working in the same job for 30 years or more, through various reorganisations and re-badgings.

Scotland has its own agency, called the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. They pay better.