How the Environment Agency assesses and scores compliance for:
abstraction and impounding licences
discharges to surface water and groundwater permits
radioactive substances activities permits
waste operations and installations permits
flood risk activities
These guides include:
6 principles which explain how the Environment Agency assesses and scores permit compliance
an explanation of what happens after a compliance assessment
an explanation of how the Environment Agency uses the results of an assessment, including how this affects subsistence charges for waste operations and installations
Updates to this page
Last updated:
22 October 2026
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Updated 'Radioactive substances activities: assessing environmental permit compliance' to remove this paragraph: 'We send nuclear operators a draft RASCAR form so they can check for matters of technical accuracy associated with the plant and management arrangements only. Following this check, we may agree to factual changes before issuing a final RASCAR form.'
Amended principle 4 in 'Discharges to surface water and groundwater: assessing environmental permit compliance' to align with other guidance and prevent contradiction with principle 2. This now states that if a compliance assessment finds several non-compliances under different permit conditions and the root cause of each relates to different failings in the management system, we can record the non-compliance against each sub condition within the management condition.
Added new document "Flood Risk Activities: assessing environmental permit compliance".
Discharges to surface water and groundwater, section 'Explaining the outcomes of a compliance assessment' added information about the phased publication of CAR forms to the Environment Agency’s online public register on GOV.UK.
Updated all the attachments to explain the timeframe for appealing a regulatory decision and linked to guidance on this. Updated 'Radioactive substances activities: assessing licence compliance', in the section 'Explaining the outcomes of a compliance assessment' to clarify when the Environment Agency send draft RASCARs to nuclear operators and how to appeal a regulatory decision.
Updated Principle 6 in 'Waste operations and installations: assessing and scoring environmental compliance' to say that the Environment Agency will consider the wider impact on climate change for incidents involving the release of greenhouse gas.
Updated the 'explaining the outcomes' section of each attachment to explain how to appeal a regulatory decision.
Added the attachment 'Abstraction and impounding activities: assessing licence compliance'.
In the document 'Waste operations and installations: assessing and scoring environmental permit compliance', we have updated the section ‘Explaining the outcomes of a compliance assessment’ – a permit holder can now challenge any part of the CAR form within 28 days of receipt.
We added a publication to explain how we assess environmental permit compliance for radioactive substances activities. We made minor updates to the waste and water publications, including adding links to the radioactive substances activities publication.
We've renamed the publication for assessing and scoring environmental permit compliance for waste operations and installations (including intensive farming). This guide does not apply to radioactive substances activities.
We've added a publication to explain how we assess environmental permit compliance for discharges to surface water and groundwater.