Service status

A sophisticated criminal cyber-attack has had a major impact on the way SEPA works. We are working through all the services that we provide to understand what we need to do in the short and longer term to restore services. We are approaching this work with a sense of urgency.

• Check the service status
• Approach to Delivery of Services 
• Information about the cyber-attack

Service status update: Data returns

We are now actively reviewing many of the data returns and kindly request you to submit any outstanding returns for the Scottish Pollutant Release Inventory (SPRI).

As a result of the cyber-attack, SEPA is unable to accept SPRI data returns for 2020 via the online reporting portal or the waste LSR system as in previous years, and operators who would normally submit by email were advised through SEPA’s service status, to prepare but not submit their returns.

We are now able to collect SPRI 2020 data, and will do this by email, using an excel form. We will be contacting you in early May using your SPRI contact’s email address. Where we don’t have this, we will look for a suitable alternative and may contact you by phone to confirm the correct contact.

Once your details are confirmed, we will:

• email you with one form per SPRI site, which will include your published 2019 pollutant emissions and waste transfer data (where available).
• ask you to complete the form using your 2020 figures, and to provide the usual method and qualification information.
• ask for this form to be returned by email to SPRI.administration@sepa.org.uk by 18 June 2021.
• supply a brief additional guidance note to help you complete the form.

Scottish Pollutant Release Inventory

The Scottish Pollutant Release Inventory (SPRI) is a Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) and has the primary purpose of making publicly available officially reported annual releases of specified pollutants to air and water from SEPA-regulated industrial facilities. It also provides information on off-site transfers of waste and waste-water from these facilities. 

The SPRI data is collected, quality assured and made public under the requirements of Freedom of Information and can be compared with PRTR information from other countries. SPRI datasets from 2002 to the present year (except 2003) are available and reported annually.

Operators of sites carrying out specific activities (67 activities covering 10 major sectors) above defined capacity thresholds are obliged to report to SPRI on an annual basis. The activities and thresholds are largely determined by European reporting requirements but some thresholds have been lowered to be relevant to pollutant releases in the UK and Scotland.

Complete SPRI data is available in two places: 

Within the SEPA website’s SPRI pages at: https://www2.sepa.org.uk/spripa/Search/Options.aspx

This tool allows you to search for individual site data in various ways. The full public content of each site’s return can be downloaded as a pdf. Some summary data can be downloaded as csv files. All data provided here is as live on the SPRI database, and it will update through the year where data corrections are made.

On Scotland’s Environment Web at: https://www.environment.gov.scot/data/data-analysis/scottish-pollution-release-inventory/

This is a data analysis tool which allows you to view summarised information by industry sector for pollutants and waste transfers. Data can be downloaded in bulk, including at a site level. It is updated annually when the previous year’s data is published. 

An Experimental Official Statistics Publication for Scotland – 2019 data.

We have released figures that show emissions of pollutants to air and water and off site waste transfers reported by operators of industrial sites under the Scottish Pollutant Release Inventory (SPRI) for the 2019 calendar year. Some historic data is included for comparison. For the 2019 calendar year 1,327 sites were required to report to SPRI.

Emissions of carbon dioxide and methane from the SEPA-regulated industrial sites which report to SPRI continue the decrease seen over the past decade. Carbon dioxide emissions fell by 57% between 2010 and 2019; methane fell by 44%.

Emissions to air from sites in the Waste and waste-water management sector show the opposite trend, with carbon dioxide releases up by 76% since 2010. This is partly due to the increase in incineration of waste. However, their emissions of greenhouses gases remain small relative to the energy sector.

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