Policy paper

Assessing and scoring environmental permit and licence compliance

How the Environment Agency assesses and scores compliance with environmental permits, abstraction licences and impounding licences.

Applies to England

Documents

Details

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

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
Published 14 January 2019
Last updated 16 January 2024 + show all updates
  1. Updated the 'explaining the outcomes' section of each attachment to explain how to appeal a regulatory decision.

  2. Added the attachment 'Abstraction and impounding activities: assessing licence compliance'.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. First published.