Checks And Balances – Public Authority Enforcement Powers

In recent times there appears to have been an increasing trend of public authorities using the arm of the law to seize assets under the criminal code in circumstances where historically they relied largely on the civil courts to address environmental breaches.

The Environment Agency is increasingly using the criminal statutes to achieve what they would consider effective results of seizing assets and using the criminal statutes to undertake search and surveillance. In recent times it set up...