Environmental permits, information and damage
The environmental permitting regulations set the operating conditions for businesses through a permitting framework. Its risk based approach includes a hierarchy of permits from those that are tailor made for larger, more risky operations to simple registrations and exemptions from permitting for less risky operations. Permitting operations include industrial installations, mobile plant waste and extractive waste, those discharging to water and/or groundwater and radioactive substances activities.
The environmental information regulations aim to involve the public in environmental matters by giving them the right of access to environmental information held by public authorities.
The environmental damage regulations oblige operators to take steps to prevent serious environmental damage from occurring or, where it does occur, to make good such damage in line with the polluter pays principle.
You can find 3 regulations that relate to environmental permits, information and damage below to the left.
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Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIRs) Increase access to environmental information in order to increase public participation in environmental decision-making, inform debate, and increase awareness of environmental matters.
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Environmental Permitting Regulations 2010 The Regulations provide a risk based framework to control activities that could cause pollution.
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Environmental Damage (Prevention and Remediation) Regulations 2009 The regulations place obligations on operators to make good serious cases of damage to the environment, transposing the provisions of the EU Environmental Liability Directive.
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Tell us what you think should happen to these regulations and why, being specific where possible:
- Should we scrap them altogether?
- Could their purpose be achieved in a non-regulatory way (eg through a voluntary code?) How?
- Could they be reformed, simplified or merged? How?
- Can we reduce their bureaucracy through better implementation? How?
- Can we make their enforcement less burdensome? How?
- Should they be left as they are?
For example, you might consider how the application process for permits could be further improved or the requirements for smaller businesses further simplified.
The production of polyurethane parts is a part B process (control of major accident hazards) yet the production of MDI based prepolymers, which uses the part B reaction but doesn’t take it to conclusion, is a part A process. IThe latter involves the companies and Environment Agency in more work than is necessary so stop it.
The EA should not charge for permits issued to non polluting or beneficial business.
charge polluters by volume as an incentive to reduce, not for a permit to pollute
EA man hours should cost a LOT less than the £50/hr they charge at present
Consideration should be given to the visual enviromental damage of new industrial building sites, ie. they should only be alowed to be built on sites that are already an industrial site or on brownfield sites that are standing empty, not on undeveloped farm land and countryside. Windfarms are industrial sites and so should not be allowed to be built on a site that does not already have industry on it.
If standards of environmental protection are to be upheld there is a need to develop a robust way of regulating which ensures that projects are carried out safely with all parties being aware of their legal responsibilities and taking responsibility for their actions. This is possible to achieve without the need for automatic regulatory intervention and detailed oversight of each and every activity in a project.
It s not necessarily the regulations which need amending but there is a need for more effective way to administer and implement the regulations and permitting. The use of ‘suitably qualified experienced practitioner’ has the capability to meet the aims of self–regulation for permitting together with other applications. For example the use of registered SiLCs (www.silc.org.uk) could prove affective means for providing supportive documents for environmental permitting or for ‘sign-off’ of such documents, thereby reducing the burden of administration and costs to the taxpayer and to UK Industry through a quicker, safer and more robust approach whilst upholding the strategic aims of such legislation to protect and improve our environment. Such a scheme could be regulated through professional institutions, codes of professional conduct and selective auditing by the regulator.
Understanding why legislation is in place or why you are required to obtain a permit is key to alleviating the ‘red tape experience’. The word of the law is only as good as the application of that law and how it transfers to the people that matter (i.e. those who are involved in the activity as part of their job). I think this applies to all industries and all activities that require regulation and/or permits. Environmental law, however, is particularly fast-evolving leaving many who are subject to it with that familiar “great, another piece of paperwork to process” feeling. At the base level, this is really all to do with training, people need to understand why they are filling out forms and applying for permits in order to see that it is worth doing. For me, it’s not a question of whether regulations should be in place but, rather, it’s a question of linking the people who make them coherently to the people who are responsible for carrying them out. This includes translating what they really mean for the individual, their company and the environment. When new regulations are put in place there needs to be greater clarification on the meaning of it and a greater effort to communicate this to the people who are affected by it.Comment Tags: EcoEvents, legal compliance, training
The whole process of applying for and varying permits is a sole destroying job. Each time a permit needs to be varied multiple copies of multiple pages of mostly irrelevant information has to submitted up front of changing anything. this is a considerable cost to say the least. I am all for environmental protection, but we appear to have lost sight of this as an overarching objective. I have a new mobile plant permit for which I subitted a deployment form on January 3rd. I just got notification that I need a new agricultral benefit statement as I had had the waste stream re analysed! there was no appreciable change. We need to go back to the days when we could approach a regulator in person who knows and understands the possible impacts and cut out the faceless paper shufflers.
Agreed. after researching the fees and processes demanded by the EA for a simple recycling business. not a polluter or ‘producer of waste’ I recycled the business plan.
No wonder its still cheaper to send waste abroad. It may be illegal, but the EA are too busy collecting money to enforce their own rules.
Business pays the EA £50 per hour
(FOI Request)Comment Tags: environment agency
i have studied long and hard be in a position where i can work in industry to allow it to run run to provide the public with what it wants but at the same time to ensure that all possible actions are taken to prevent any harm to either the public or to the environment. having said this it is also a bone breaker to fill in the many different forms with the exact same information written down in a different way for a different group of people in a different area ( sometimes just in a different room) why can’t there be a central data base with just ONE set of data that each group can access? 1 have 5 different forms for waste.Comment Tags: environment, forms, Permitting, Regulations
According to a FOI request, the EA charges £50 per hour.
Maybe that is reason enough