Three Year Corporate Plan April 2005

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency plays a key role in contributing to sustainable development, a theme running throughout our work and this document.

Put simply, sustainable development is about ensuring a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come; economically, socially and environmentally.

The environment is a tremendous resource for Scotland, and it must be continually protected and improved to ensure it stays this way, as the basis of a healthy society and a thriving economy. That is what SEPA is about.

We play our part in sustainable development as the environmental regulator and as an influential expert and advocate for the environment. We inform environmental policy development and we communicate and implement policy priorities. We do this alongside those who have responsibility for the economic and social dimensions. In this way Scottish Ministers have the full spectrum of the expert, independent advice and information they need to inform their decisions.

Our approach, targets and success measures are set out in the following chapters. One area of work I would like to highlight here is our drive to develop, implement and report on our internal environmental policy, to reduce our own impacts on the environment. Our successes so far include reducing our energy consumption and air emissions, as well as reducing wastes generated. To continue this success, as this plan explains, we are seeking certification to the environmental management system standard ISO 14001 for all our sites and activities. Through initiatives such as this we can all help to make Scotland a more socially inclusive and prosperous place to live and work within the foundation of a healthy and well-protected environment.

To achieve sustainable development and effect genuine and positive environmental change, there is no doubt that a long-term view is required and SEPA needs to be forward looking, efficient, and scientifically and methodologically reliable and credible. This three-year plan, the first that SEPA has produced, demonstrates how we will accomplish this.