Working for the Environment Agency

If you’re part of the Environment Agency (EA), you’re part of the solution. Working with us means protecting and improving the environment for generations to come, tackling issues of national importance across a huge variety of disciplines and professions.

We’re based in over 14 areas across England, and our responsibilities span major industry regulation, flood defences, land contamination, water quality, fisheries and conservation.   Such a broad scope of work calls for diverse, multi-skilled teams, and we offer roles in engineering, research, habitat creation, business planning, communications and asset management.

By bringing our talents together, we’ll promote sustainable growth and tackle climate change, securing a better future for everyone. 

We pride ourselves on our sense of community and making sure our teams enjoy a positive and caring workplace. That goes for our careers too – whatever your goals, we’ll support you with exceptional coaching and mentoring while giving you opportunities to thrive. 

Together, We'll Help The Environment In More Ways Than Ever

The Environment Agency is a Category One emergency responder under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. We work with the emergency services, the local authorities and other partners to plan for, respond to and aid recovery from emergencies affecting people and the environment across the country. Often we are the sole or lead responder, but on many occasions we are part of a coalition working with our professional partners in the 38 Local Resilience Forums across England.

We handle a wide variety of incidents. They include:

• Pollution – fires, oil spills, radiation, nuclear, waste dumping, odours, noise, pollution of water courses. Examples: the Buncefield explosion at an oil storage facility in 2005, the serious pollution of the Thames by Thames Water in 2013 and 2014 for which they were eventually fined £20m, the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, the Salisbury Novichok attack in 2018.
• Wildlife – threats to animals and habitat. Examples: Foot & Mouth Disease 2001, drought in 2018.
• Water – too little and too much. Examples: managing the risk of environmental damage from drought, which we did in summer 2018, summer 2022 and continue to do today. The summer of 2022 was the driest summer since 1995. By September 2022, 11 out of the 14 Environment Agency areas were in drought. This has a huge impact on people and wildlife such as destroying habitats. We also managed the risk to people from the Toddbrook Dam damaged in the 2019 downpours and protected and supported communities affected by the February 2020 floods.

We handle a lot of incidents. In 2012-2022 76,777 were reported to us, which is one every 7 minutes. And we deploy our people to many of those: on average, an incident requires our attendance once every 40 minutes and about 5 incidents every week require significant deployment of our resources.

The Environment Agency was created in 1996. We have reduced the risk of flooding for thousands of people; helped protect our waters, land and air from pollution; and worked with industry and local communities to promote growth and transform the environment.

To learn more about the experiences of our employees, click the link  below:

Environment Agency Early Careers - Youth Employment UK