Housebuilders are reportedly furious that farmers are granted licences to pollute rivers on a far larger scale than blocked new housing developments.
Over the past two years the Environment Agency has issued almost 500 derogations to farmers in so-called nitrate-vulnerable zones.
But at the same time Natural England, another government environmental quango, has effectively banned new housing developments across 74 local authority areas due to similar pollution concerns.
An analysis suggests that the additional nitrate discharge levels being granted to farmers by the Environment Agency is equivalent to the total annual nitrogen that would be produced by hundreds of thousands of new homes.
The Home Builders Federation said: “It is frustrating that one government quango’s solution is to ban housebuilding, despite its negligible contribution to the issue, whilst another signs off the use of thousands of tonnes of nutrient-rich fertiliser, the main cause of the issue.”
