4Briefing note – June 2017
The way in which environment permits for regulated industries in England are evaluated and charged is be overhauled. The Environment Agency (EA) says that these changes will give it an opportunity to take a holistic view of operator performance as opposed to the current OPRA system which mostly just measures the hazards of a particular site. Detailed facts, figures and proposed changes are yet to be revealed as yet but the general principles are as follows. This new approach will move from just compliance monitoring to full performance-based regulations.
Performance-based regulations
One element of this will be to increase the use of self-assurance and earned recognition schemes.
The move away from OPRA
The current A-F system of compliance scoring will be replaced by four descriptive bands:
Encouragingly, the proposed system is similar to that being introduced by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency but in Wales the existing charging scheme will continue for now.
The proposed system can be accessed via ENDS environmental intelligence here (free subscription).