The Environment Agency is refusing to provide campaigners with details of potential conflicts of interests with water companies held by its directors across England.

The refusal to provide the information comes after the head of the agency, Philip Duffy, admitted that freedom of information requests have been buried by the regulator because the truth about the environment in England is “embarrassing”.

Ash Smith, of Windrush against Sewage Pollution (Wasp), said the refusal to provide details of any potential conflicts of financial and business interests held by the regulator’s regional directors was inexcusable. He revealed that a freedom of information (FoI) request had been rejected by the EA on the grounds that there was no lawful basis on providing the information as it was not necessary to satisfy a legitimate interest.

The EA also said it would be unfair to individuals to disclose such information to the world at large. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is now investigating the refusal to comply with the FoI request.

In a letter to Duffy, Smith said: “Claiming that the public has no right to know and that the interest of potentially conflicted employees takes precedence is ludicrous and disgraceful … public scrutiny and transparency are vital.”

He called on Duffy not to wait for the ICO ruling on the refusal but “to set the professional standards of your organisation, apply the Nolan principles of public life and order the release of the directors interests under the Freedom of Information Act”.

Smith highlighted past cases of senior agency staff moving to work for water companies as the reason transparency was needed.

These include the former director of operations for the EA, who became a non-executive director of British Water, then an industry lobbying organisation, and was later recruited by Southern Water at the time it had been accused of illegal sewage dumping, for which it was later fined a record £90m.

Duffy, who took over as the EA chief executive last July, told an audience at the Rivers Summit last month that his officials were “worried about revealing the true state of what is going on” regarding the state of the environment.

Duffy said: “I see these letters and these FoI requests and I’ve got great volumes of them, and I see local officers going through quite a contorted processes to not to answer when they know, often, the answer but it’s embarrassing.

“They do it because they are frightened. They are worried about revealing the true state of what’s going on, they’re worried about reaction from NGOs and others, and possibly from the government, about the facts of the situation. And they’re often working at a local level but in a very nationally charged political environment, which is very difficult for them.”

The ICO, which oversees the law on the Freedom of Information Act, has warned the EA that the public have a right to have their requests answered and that transparency should be taken seriously.

Last year, theEA was served with an enforcement notice by the ICO because of evidence seen by the commissioner about its performance in relation to its statutory duties under the FoI Act.

An EA spokesperson said: “We are completely committed to complying with the freedom of information/environmental information regulations. It’s a top priority and we constantly review our performance. We receive around 46,000 requests each year. As is standard practice for public sector organisations, we make public the personal interests of all board members and executive directors at the Environment Agency, but it’s right we do not make public the interests of other employees. This is because it would be unlawful, unfair and would breach data protection rules.”