Regimes of environmental regulation vary in style from command-and-control to relatively hands-off. The prevailing UK approach is somewhere between the two. Regulatory philosophy seeks to encourage industry to put its own house in order, but applies sanctions such as prosecutions, fines and withdrawal of permits to operate if they fail or default. Officials included in the Bath study worked for the Environment Agency of England and Wales, a payroll of some 9,500 people who regulate over 2000 industrial processes on waste disposal, water quality and industrial emissions. The study tracked a cross section of 82 Agency staff as they went about their regulatory work. All the inspectors were interviewed and some were monitored as they carried out their inspections.

The study's focus was on how regulatory standards were determined and policed in the field, and the effect of organisational and political pressures on inspectors. Findings suggest that regulation is a complex social and emotional arena rife with tensions and conflicts, not least:

• A tendency for regulators to see fairness in environmental control as a matter for negotiation rather than an absolute value. Many feel uneasy in the face of powerful corporations with ample capacity to contest their views or prescriptions, so they often resort to persuasion and bluff to reach agreement - which may or may not result in the best environmental protection.
• Debatable legislative rubrics, such as Best Available Techniques Not Entailing Excessive Cost (BATNEEC). These are intended to help determine optimum, cost-effective, pollution control yet often fail to do so. Many inspectors were inclined to create their own moral league table of industrial operators, deciding what degree of control they merit and who the 'villains' are.
• Drawbacks to powers of prosecution. Resorting to litigation was frequently regarded as a failure properly to regulate, a breakdown in the preferred collaborative style and a complicating factor for future relations with the firm in question. There was also reluctance to prosecute smaller companies facing insolvency. Yet not to prosecute worked against the grain of Agency and Government policy to be demonstrably tough on polluters.
• Superior resources at industry's disposal. Inspectors feared being outplayed in courts-of-law and had little faith in courts delivering punishments to fit the environmental crime.