ABSTRACT
Environmental regulation has been observed in 'input–output' form. Regulatory pressure is applied to an industry or company (the input) and this creates an output effect – such as reduction in pollution incidents, changes in factory emissions, cleaner watercourses, different forms of waste management, and so forth. While environmental law provides the scaffold for regulatory conduct, it is the actors, both the regulator and the regulated, inspector and inspected, who breathe life into this scaffold, shaping regulatory standards and control. Street-level bureaucrats, typically, work for legislatively defined agencies of social control and have face-to-face contact with those they regulate. In attempting to make regulation work, the environmental inspector sits, often uneasily, at the intersection of a number of different interests – economic, industrial, environmental and governmental. The Environment Agency of England and Wales regulates some 2000 industrial processes on waste disposal, water quality and industrial emissions, each area defined formally according to dedicated legislation.
