Environmental Permitting

Depending on your activity and the pollution risk, you may need to apply to the Environment Agency or your local council for an environmental permit. 

Some activities may be excluded from the environmental permitting regime (where you do not need a permit) and others may be exempt (where you do not need a permit but you may need to register). 

If the environmental regulator has refused your application for an environmental permit, or an application to vary your permit, you may appeal that decision.

A number of issues commonly arise in corporate transactions where a target business holds an environmental permit, including:

• Does the company or business have all the environmental permits and consents it requires in order to operate and have these been complied with? If there is an asset purchase, there might need to be a joint application to transfer the permit to the buyer. 
• Has the regulator taken any enforcement action, or is there any enforcement action pending?
• Is there any significant capital expenditure that may be needed to bring the operations into compliance?

Once a permit has been granted, the Environment Agency will check that you’re complying with it. That could include a desk based assessment to make sure you’ve sent them the required information, or a site inspection.

Site inspections are usually unannounced but some might be pre-arranged. Environment Agency staff will look around your site and ask questions, They may ask to see documents or talk to your staff.

If the Environment Agency carry out an assessment, inspection or attend an incident, they will complete a Compliance Assessment Report (CAR). The CAR will record anything you’re doing that doesn’t comply with your environmental permit and will set out what you must do to correct this. CARs are published on a public register.

You can appeal a CAR but that must be done within 14 days of receiving it. 

In the event of a pollution event, the Environment Agency has a number of options to take enforcement action, including criminal prosecution and various civil sanctions, one of which is Enforcement Undertakings.  

An Enforcement Undertaking is a voluntary offer made by an organisation or individual responsible for a pollution incident to put right the effects of that incident and make sure it can’t happen again. It is the Environment Agency’s responsibility to decide when they will or will not accept an offer. If an Enforcement Undertaking is accepted, actioned with agreed timescales, and delivers the agreed outputs, then the regulator can no longer prosecute the offence or pursue another civil sanction, nor can the public start private proceedings.