ENVIRONMENT AGENCY

Surface water flood maps published by the Environment Agency

Assessing and managing climate change risks in supply chains

This document provides guidance to businesses on improving the resilience of their supply chains to climate change pressures.

Environmental Good Practice Guidance: Guidance to help you maintain your watercourses

Guidance is provided on the management of watercourses including desilting and management of adjacent vegetation.

Working Together Agreement between the Environment Agency and Public Health England on Environmental permitting

Screening criteria to identify which environmental permit applications require a consultation for health protection advice

Offence Response Options

This document records every offence the Environment Agency regulates and provides guidance on options available for each (warnings, formal cautions, prosecutions and/or fixed penalty notices).

Contaminated Land Programme approved projects for 2013/14 factsheet summary

This document presents local authority inspection and remediation projects that have received funding for 2013-14 under the contaminated land capital projects programme.

Regulatory Position Statement (RPS): Onshore oil and gas well decommissioning and abandonment for wells drilled prior to 1 October 2013

Updated CRC Guidance

Regulatory Position Statement (RPS): CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme Phase 2 Registration

This statement provides guidance to landlords with tenants who hold climate change agreements (CCAs) or EU ETS permits.

CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme guidance for participants in Phase 2

CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme guidance for participants in Phase 1

Updated EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) Guidance

European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) Aircraft Operator Guide: How to Comply With Phase III of the EU ETS

European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) Phase III: Guidance for installations - How to comply with the EU ETS and Small Emitter and Hospital Opt-Out Scheme

NORTHERN IRELAND ENVIRONMENT AGENCY

Guidance note: Applying for registration as an upper tier carrier, broker or dealer in controlled waste or Applying for registration as a lower tier carrier in controlled waste

This document provides guidance on applicants for the two classes of waste carrier licence in Northern Ireland.

State of the environment report 2013

This report follows the report “Our environment, our heritage, our future” from 2008. The report presents key performance indicator data on 8 themes: air, climate, water, marine, land and landscape, biodiversity, built heritage and waste and resources.

DEPARTMENT FOR ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS (DEFRA)

Draft Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2013: A summary of responses to the consultation and government response

A consultation at the start of 2013 presented several deregulatory proposals regarding the environmental permitting regime in England and Wales. This response document records that the government shall now proceed to make the following amendments:

• Remove the requirement for waste businesses to hold planning permission for waste operations before an environmental permit may be issued;
• To introduce a registration scheme for low risk discharges to groundwater from some ground source heating and cooling systems;
• Consolidate public register information from local authorities into Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales registers to simplify their administration; and
• A number of further changes to simplify the regulation of standard rules permits, clarifying requirements relating to landowner permission to clean up permitted sites and streamlining the permit transfer and notice procedures.

The consultation response also communicates an intention to consolidate the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010 and its amendments into a single piece of legislation as soon as practicable.

Water Bill Briefing Notes

Defra has published a number of further briefing notes supporting the Water Bill 2013-14, which aims to improve regulation of the water environment, abstraction licences, water industry and flood risk and insurance.  The following notes were published in December 2013:

• Water Bill: Environmental Permitting Framework: indicative regulations for flood defence consents
  This note provides background to English and Welsh proposals to bring flood defence consents, water abstraction licences and fish passage approvals into the environmental permitting regime. In addition the Bill proposes to clarify the circumstances under which a permit would be required or an exemption applies.
  
  A draft statutory instrument to amend the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010 is included in the annex to this note.
• Water Bill: Sustainable development and resilience duties
  This note introduces the proposed resilience duty, which would require Ofwat to secure long-term resilience of water and sewerage services in light of demand and environmental pressures. The note also details proposals to reinforce Ofwat’s duty to promote the Government’s sustainable development objectives.
   

Derogations from the Animal By-Product controls under Regulation (EC) 1069/2009 and Commission Regulation (EU) 142/2011

Defra has updated the list of derogations from the Animal By-product Regulation.

Waste management plan for England

This plan has been prepared to meet the requirements of the revised Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC) and combines waste management policies into a single national plan. No new policies or changes to waste management are introduced by this plan.

Waste Prevention Programme for England

Defra has published a series of documents that comprise England’s waste prevention programme, which is required under the revised Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC). The programme presents actions being undertaken to prevent waste generation and that can be taken by individuals, businesses and other organisations to improve resource efficiency.

Centres for agricultural innovation: review of stakeholder feedback

SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT

Remanufacture, refurbishment, reuse and recycling of vehicles: Trends and Opportunities

Recyclate Quality Action Plan - Summary of Consultation Responses

In the third quarter of 2012 a consultation was run on the Scottish Government's Recyclate Quality Action Plan (RQAP).  The RQAP is intended to support the implementation of the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012.

Review of Local Air Quality Management in Scotland - analysis of consultation responses

Planning Circulars

Four circulars providing guidance on the administration of planning procedures in Scotland were published December 2013:

• Planning Series Circular 3/2013: Development Management Procedures
• Planning Series Circular 4/2013: Planning Appeals
• Planning Series Circular 5/2013: Schemes of Delegation and Local Reviews
• Planning Series Circular 6/2013: Development Planning

Responses to the Planning Scotland’s Sea Consultation

• Planning Scotland's Sea: Priority Marine Features Consultation Responses
• Planning Scotland’s Seas – Scotland's National Marine Plan Consultation Draft - Responses

These documents present responses to the 2013 consultation on Marine policy in Scotland.
 

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE (DECC)

Green Deal: How the Green Deal and Feed-In Tariffs work together

This information sheet has been prepared to inform consumers how savings may be achieved through the combination of the feed-in tariff (FIT) and the green deal.

Smart metering summary plan

This plan concerns the implementation of smart metering in Great Britain, detailing progress to December 2013 and forthcoming phases.

High–level proposals on changes to the ECO scheme

The Government intends to consult on the changes to ECO, with the intention to reduce the carbon emissions reduction obligation target by a third to March 2015 but extend the programme until March 2017. This document provides proposals to be included in the later consultation, which it is intended will take place in early 2014.

2013 Home Energy Conservation Act (HECA) reports

DECC has published reports from 303 local authorities in England setting out energy conservation measures considered practicable, economic and likely to result in significant energy efficiency improvements in residences.

Electricity Market Reform

DECC has published a series of guidance documents on market reform under the Energy Act 2013:

• First delivery plan for electricity market reform
• Investing in renewable technologies – Contract for Difference terms and strike prices

Supplementary Renewables Investment Decision Guidance

Update 3: Contract Award Process

This document provides information on how decisions on investment in renewable energy will be reached under the Final Investment Decision (FID) enabling programme. This programme aims to prevent a reduction in investment in low carbon generation in advance of the introduction of the Feed-in Tariff with Contracts for Difference under the Energy Act 2013.

Qualifying Projects

This document presents qualifying renewables projects under the FID enabling programme.

DEPARTMENT FOR COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT (DCLG)

Circular 04/2013: The Building Act 1984, the Building Regulations 2010: new 2013 Approved Documents for Part L and new compliance guides

This circular introduces the new approved documents under Part L (L1A and L2A) and amendments to existing 2010 approved documents (L1B and L2B), while providing guidance on compliance for new domestic and non-domestic buildings

Manchester company director pleads guilty to waste charges

Mr Andrew Smith a company director for MCR Central Skip Hire a Manchester-based skip rental firm was prosecuted on 12 December 2013 after waste was illegally deposited on an embankment close to a public footpath.

Mr Smith pleaded guilty to failing to prevent his company depositing waste on a site without an environmental permit at a court hearing which took place yesterday at Manchester and Salford Magistrates Court. Mr Smith was fined £500 and ordered to pay £100 court costs plus a victim surcharge of £15.

The Environment Agency instigated investigations after being contacted by a member of the public who observed waste being tipped into trees and shrubbery over the boundary wall of Kingston Distribution Centre, in Honey Street, Collyhurst.

The waste had been deposited onto the embankment from the distribution centre, where MCR Central Skip Hire had been contracted to clear the site and has caused environmental harm to the land.   There was also the potential for the waste to have spilled onto a footpath which runs close to the site.

Companies fined £20,000 for illegal waste offences

Two waste companies were fined a total of £20,000 plus costs of £2,079.60 on 16 December 2013 at Newtownards Magistrates' Court.

During a site visit in December 2012, officers from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), discovered non-compliant waste being deposited by IRS Recycling Ltd at TIPCO’s inert landfill site at Drumhirk Way, Conlig, Bangor, breaching conditions of their waste authorisation.

TIPCO NI Ltd and IRS Recycling Ltd, 40 Springwell Road Bangor, pleaded guilty to charges relating to the deposit of non-inert waste at TIPCO’S inert landfill site.   TIPCO Ltd and IRS Recycling both pleaded guilty to keeping and treating waste in or on land without a waste management licence one charge contrary to Article4(1)(b) of the Waste and Contaminated Land (Northern Ireland) Order 1997.  TIPCO Ltd were also found guilty to breaching Regulation 33(1)(b) of the Pollution Prevention and Control Regulations (NI) 2003 relating to failing to comply with or to contravene a condition of a permit .

Waste operator’s permit revoked

A waste facility in Blaenau Ffestiniog has had its environmental permit revoked after failing to comply with the conditions in its permit over a period of time. The permit holders, Mr Christopher and Mr George Evans, have been informed that as of 19 November 2013, they must not accept any new waste or treat any further waste materials on site. All remaining waste, including vehicles, waste fuel, scrap metal and parts, must be removed from the site by 17 March 2014.  Failure to comply with this could lead to prosecution.

This follows a recent conviction, whereby one of the permit holders, Mr Christopher Evans, was convicted of failing to comply with an enforcement notice requiring them to comply with the terms of their permit.