Date:              20 May 2008

Embargo:       None

Resources needed for SEPA’s Compliance assessment scheme

Scottish Environmental Services Association (SESA) attended a seminar to discuss proposals for Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s (SEPA’s) new compliance assessment scheme. The new scheme will apply to various regulatory regimes including Pollution Prevention Control and Waste Management Licensing and will replace current Operator Performance Assessments (OPA).

It is proposed that the new compliance scheme will incorporate an assessment of specific licence conditions, namely environmental limit conditions and environmental management conditions. Environmental limit conditions are the numerical or absolute conditions which relate directly to the environmental impact regulated by a licence. Environmental management conditions are generally descriptive and relate to attributes of environmental management, including staff and managerial arrangements, operational procedures and reporting and incident management.

SEPA has developed a compliance matrix which allows the annual performance of licensed activities to be assessed against 5 bands of compliance, ranging from excellent to very poor. Following a consultation process and operator trials, the new compliance assessment scheme should be in place by January 2009 and, subject to further consultation, SEPA intends to integrate the new compliance assessment scheme with its charging scheme.

In principle, SESA supports the introduction of a new compliance assessment scheme.  However, the lack of an independent appeal system for inspection scores could seriously compromise its practical application. SEPA also needs to be resourced, and its staff adequately trained to ensure that the proposed compliance framework of site inspections and audits can be put in place in a fair and equitable manner.

ENDS