Environment Agency Consultation: Scoring Permit Compliance

27 Sep 2018 03:03 PM

The EA is consulting on proposals to make enforcement more proportionate and that the level of risk is taken into account when infringements occur.

Consultation on assessing and scoring permit compliance

We have listened to feedback, and this autumn, we have launched a consultation on some changes to the way we assess and score permit compliance.

These changes will form part of our ongoing, five-year, strategic programme known as Performance Based Regulation. We have committed to streamlining and simplifying how we assess permit compliance, with a view to making it more consistent and proportionate to the level of risk or impact.

The consultation proposals include four main changes, which are:

• To consolidate scores in such a way that the annual compliance band is reflective of the risk or impact posed by the site, and to avoid sites moving into bands associated with poorer compliance, simply because they have incurred multiple minor non-compliances under the same permit condition.
• To suspend scores in such a way that the period of suspension can be flexible and related to the scale and complexity of the improvements that have been agreed and are being undertaken.
• To report the outcomes of a compliance assessment involving periodic returns or other detailed reports to the operator within 28 days, to enable us to manage the workload of assessing many detailed reports which arrive simultaneously.
• To explain how compliance assessment data is used in performance reporting and in the case of most waste activities and installations to generate annual subsistence charges

Please click below do download this document in full.

180918_EXTERNAL BRIEFING NOTE_CCS CONSULTATION (DOCX)