TOXIC air that harms health, and water pollution from sewage and farming must be tackled as urgent priorities, the new environmental watchdog has warned.

Overfishing and damage to sea floors from trawling, loss of natural habitats, and degraded soils must also be urgently dealt with by the Government, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) urges in its first report.

OEP chairwoman Dame Glenys Stacey said that, despite ambition by the Government, the environment is in a “precarious” state and suffering worrying and persistent declines in air and water quality, species and habitats.

The report calls for the Government to make a comprehensive “stocktake” of the state of the natural world, set out ambitious legal targets and coherent action, and to make the environment a priority across all departments.

Addressing the crisis in England’s air, water, landscapes and seas should have the same level of cross-government support and urgency as climate efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, it urges.

The OEP is also calling on the Government to reverse the decline in funding for monitoring the state of the environment over the last decade – but does not call for more resources overall to tackling the environmental crisis.

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A decade ago the Conservative Government said it wanted to leave the natural world in England in a better state for future generations than it found it, and in 2018 produced the 25 Year Environment Plan with dozens of measures across 10 areas from clean air and water to waste, wildlife and landscapes.

Last year it also passed the Environment Act, which will allow for setting new targets in areas including curbing air pollution, and is set to produce a new Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) under the Act next year.

The report calls on the Government to understand the drivers of environmental decline, create a vision to tackle the crisis, set ambitious targets, implement coherent strategy and policy, ensure good governance and monitoring, assessment and reporting on progress.

Environment minister Rebecca Pow said: “We welcome this report, which acknowledges that our Environment Act gives us new tools to make a real difference to our environment, putting it at the heart of government and transitioning us to a sustainable future with nature on the road to recovery during this decade.

“Six months on from the Act gaining royal assent, we are currently consulting on legally binding environmental targets which include a world-leading target to halt species decline by 2030.

“We have launched a consultation to deliver the largest programme in history to tackle storm sewage discharges and we have taken action to transform the way that we deal with waste.”