Environmental Permitting Regulations 2007 Go Live

From the 6th April 2008 the Environmental Permitting Regulations (England and Wales) 2007 come into force. The regulations will streamline the waste management licensing and pollution control regimes. The objectives of the EPRegulations can be summarised as:

• bringing waste and PPC regulation into one joined-up risk-based regime,
• reducing red tape while maintaining environmental standards,
• simplifying and clarifying supporting documents and information systems, and
• delivering savings for both operator and regulator.

The implementation of the new regime means that standard permits will be available from the Environment Agency. A standard permit has one condition which refers to a fixed package of standard rules. These permits are for low to medium risk operations that do not require site-specific assessment of risk. These will be able to be issued quickly as the regulator will have no decisions to make on site-specific conditions.

From April 2008, all Pollution Prevention and Control (PPC) permits and waste management licences will become environmental permits. There will be no impact on existing permit and licence holders. However, if a company has both a permit and a licence for one site, it can apply to combine them into one permit.