DeSmog has won ‘News Item of the Year’ award from the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW), for its work exposing environmental harms in the UK.
Clare Carlile received the prize with Greenpeace’s investigative team at Unearthed for a joint investigation published on July 2025, which showed that regulators had cancelled over 10,000 water quality tests following staff shortages.
Based on internal emails from the government’s Environment Agency, the investigation found that the cancellations had left a major “regulatory and ecological blind spot” as rivers across the country faced major risks due to drought.
The prize was announced at an award ceremony on 24 July, as temperatures again reached record highs across the country, during London Climate Action Week.
Judges described the work as “a detailed and determined investigation resulting in a scoop that holds its subject accountable”.
The Environment Agency told DeSmog and Unearthed in October 2025 that staff shortages had been addressed and water testing labs were back to full capacity.
ABSW said that it received nearly three hundred entries for the awards, with journalists from the Financial Times, The Guardian and The Economist among the winners in other categories. See the full list of winners here.
Founded in 1966, the ABSW are one of the world’s oldest prizes for science writing. The association supports those working in media to cover science, medicine, environment, mathematics, engineering, and technology.
