Ross McDowall

Businesses that currently hold environmental consents for water, waste and industrial activities in Scotland should check if they will need new or amended environmental authorisations when reforms kick in.

From 1 November, environmental activities will no longer be governed by a patchwork of legislation. Instead, most will fall under the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 (EASR).

EASR, which already applies to activities involving radioactive substances, will replace eight different regulations covering activities like pollution prevention and control, waste management, landfill and end-of-life vehicles.

By replacing these different regulatory regimes, EASR will apply a uniform approach to the regulation of relevant environmental activities in Scotland. All such activities will require an “authorisation” which, depending upon the nature of the activity, will either be a bespoke or standard permit, registration, notification or General Binding Rule.

In addition, certain new activities will also need to be authorised by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) under EASR. These activities include:

• recovery of waste by application to land for the purpose of soil improvement and temporary storage of waste at place where it is to be used for that purpose;
• burning any fuel in combustion plant which generates electricity on the same site with an aggregated rated thermal input of 1MW or more;
• any activity carried on in a technical unit for the capture of carbon dioxide for utilisation or storage; and
• anaerobic digestion of non-waste materials and associated feedstock and digestate handling and storage.

SEPA has published online guidance to explain what the changes mean for businesses and to help them understand the actions they may need to take and this should be carefully reviewed.

For some, the updates may mean a change to authorisation conditions or having to apply for a new authorisation – it depends on the type of authorisation they hold, and what type of activity they undertake. This is something businesses should check.

In some cases, SEPA has provided a buffer period to enable holders to make the changes required to comply with these new conditions and is asking asked businesses to contact them if compliance will not be possible by the set deadlines.

Interestingly, in drafting the EASR, certain aspects of the previous regulatory regimes have been incorporated into the new regulatory landscape. For example, under the Pollution Prevention and Control regime, if you carried out a specified waste management activity, in addition to having day-to-day operational control, the permit holder also needed to be a “fit and proper person”. Under EASR, the “fit and proper person” requirement applies to all activities, not just waste. This is something that businesses should be aware of.

Businesses will also no doubt be interested to know whether a change in the regime will impact on fees currently payable. Authorisation holders can expect SEPA to contact them if their fees are due to change under the new regime. SEPA will re-invoice those businesses after 1 November 2025 in such circumstances. For holders whose fees will be unchanged, they can expect to be invoiced as normal in April next year.

Ross McDowall is a partner and head of Pinsent Masons’ UK environment team