I completely agree I don’t have a great idea on how they work, what I do know is I have been fishing for at least 23 years and I have never had my licence checked. I have never seen any works being carried out on local rivers or lakes and I can count on one hand how many times I have seen an ea vehicle and I travel all over the country on a weekly basis.
I think that if the efforts that they go to to do the things that they do where more in the public eye it would be far more widely understood why they exist and “what they do for me” as such.
i know about the funding and the links with the angling trust and how they try to further the sport and river stocking etc but that still doesn’t answer the club/ syndicate question, if the club/syndicate is private and not asking for help from the ea why should you have to pay a licence fee to fish?....you shouldnt. Clubs and syndicates have insurance and therefore if they needed to call on the ea the ea could invoice for the work the club/syndicate claims on insurance pays the invoice...job done
but for anyone like me that has asked the question “what do they do for me”
https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2017/02/13/so-what-do-the-environment-agency-do-for-us/?utm_source=EA&utm_medium=email&utm_content=short_term-db&utm_campaign=Feb17