Compliance Assessment Scheme

As Scotland's environmental regulator, SEPA issues a range of licences designed to control activities that could lead to pollution or environmental damage. Compliance with these licences is important in ensuring that the environment and human health are protected.

SEPA believes that the industries and businesses it regulates should find it as easy as possible to understand their responsibilities, to comply with the regulations and to realise the many economic benefits of good environmental practice. For these reasons, SEPA has made a strong commitment in its Corporate Plan 2008 – 2011 to delivering a programme of Better Regulation.

As part of this programme, improvements are being made to SEPA's approach to assessing compliance with environmental licences, permits, authorisations and certain registrations (referred to generically as 'licences' in this consultation). This will lead to more effective, transparent and efficient regulation.

The Compliance Assessment Scheme will apply across all regulatory regimes but will be implemented in a phased manner to allow adequate time for thorough preparation for each regime and to learn from issues raised at each stage of implementation. The scheme will apply to Pollution Prevention and Control (PPC) from January 2009, resulting in the first assessments of these licences being produced in spring 2010. The scheme will be introduced for the remaining regimes in 2010 and in 2011 as indicated in the table below. Licence holders will be notified in advance of the scheme being implemented in their respective regimes.

During the development of the scheme SEPA held a stakeholder workshop in May 2008, and joint trials between SEPA and operators were undertaken during the summer of 2008. A public consultation ran from 7 July to 3 October 2008. Eighty-four responses were received and these, along with feedback from the trials, resulted in substantial changes to the scheme.