Comply with your environmental permit

Your permit conditions are legally binding. The rules here are for permits the Environment Agency regulates, such as waste operations, installations, water discharges and flood risk activities.

Meet your permit conditions

To comply with your permit you must:

• have a competent person or people manage your activities day to day
• carry out only the activities your permit covers
• build the infrastructure that prevents pollution before you start operating, such as hardstanding, drainage, bunds, buildings, plant and equipment where needed
• keep a written management system that prevents or minimises the risk of pollution
• carry out the monitoring your permit specifies and send in the data and reports it requires

A management system is a working document. Review it regularly and change it when your operations or risks change. It must cover the risks of pollution from your operations, including maintenance, from an accident or incident, from climate change, from breaching your permit, from a complaint and from closing the operation. Keep records of what you do under it and of every review or update, and keep it up to date and easy to reach, because an inspector can ask to see it.

You must also follow other law that applies directly to you, such as the duty of care for waste. Use the appropriate measures for your activity: the industry and sector standards, guidance and good practice that suit its size, nature and location. Write them into your management system.

What the Environment Agency checks

The Environment Agency checks your compliance in four ways:

• an assessment, which is a desk-based check, for example of information you have sent in
• an inspection, when an officer visits your site
• an audit, which is a more in-depth check on site, at a desk or both
• sampling of a permitted water discharge or groundwater activity

Inspections are usually unannounced, although some are arranged in advance, and audits are normally arranged in advance. Officers look around your site, ask questions, and may ask to see documents or talk to your staff. The Environment Agency always inspects or assesses waste operations, installations, complex flood risk activities and complex water discharges and groundwater activities, such as large sewage treatment plants. It may also inspect after a pollution incident at or near your site, after a flood incident at your site (for flood risk activities), or after a complaint.

Compliance assessment reports and scoring

After an assessment, an inspection or an incident, the Environment Agency gives you a compliance assessment report. It records what does not comply with your permit and what you must do to put it right, and it is usually sent within 14 days. The law requires it to go on the public register, and the Environment Agency publishes reports 42 days after issue, starting with water discharge activities in reports written from 28 February 2025.

If you disagree with a report, raise it with the officer or team that issued it within 14 calendar days of receiving it. If that does not settle it, you can ask for an appeal of the regulatory decision within 28 calendar days of receiving their response.

Pay your annual subsistence charge

While you hold a permit you pay an annual subsistence charge, which covers the Environment Agency's planned compliance work, including the mandatory inspections and assessments. The charge starts when the permit is issued, or from a later start date stated in it. If there is a delay between issue and starting work, you do not pay until construction or operations begin. Most annual invoices go out at the start of April, and Direct Debit is the preferred way to pay. Charges for unplanned work, such as attending an incident, are made on top.

The charging scheme sets the amount for each activity.

Report incidents and breaches

Call the Environment Agency incident hotline on 0800 80 70 60 at any time if there is pollution to land, an incident at a regulated waste site, or other damage or danger to the natural environment. You can report water pollution online. Check your permit for the incident and breach notification duties that apply to you, because reporting and notification are among the things the Environment Agency assesses. Your management system must also plan for accidents and incidents.

If you do not comply

The Environment Agency can take enforcement action if you do not put a breach right in a reasonable time, or if it suspects you have broken the law. It can:

• give you advice
• change your permit conditions by varying it on its own initiative
• serve an enforcement notice that sets out what you must do to fix the problem and by when
• serve a suspension notice, if there is a risk of pollution, which means you must stop the activities until it confirms you have done what the notice requires
• revoke your permit, in whole or in part, which means it ceases to exist on the date in the notice
• prosecute you, if it thinks that is in the public interest

It can also do the work to deal with serious pollution, or the risk of it, and recover the cost from you. If you want to carry on after a revocation, you must apply for a new permit, which can be refused. You can also be prosecuted for failing to comply with a notice, for failing to give information it asks for, and for knowingly or recklessly giving false or misleading information, including when you apply to vary, transfer or surrender a permit.

The prison terms are the maximums on conviction in the Crown Court. In a magistrates' court the maximum prison term is the general limit for that court.

Permit reviews

The Environment Agency reviews all the permits for a sector from time to time, to check that their conditions suit the activity and site and reflect the latest standards. It will contact you if your permit is included. It usually asks for information about how you operate by serving a notice under regulation 61. If you do not reply or cannot supply the information, it adds improvement conditions to your permit, and failing to meet them gives you a non-compliance score.

You must keep complying with your permit while the review is going on. If the review leads to changes, the Environment Agency consults you before it issues a revised permit and decision document, and you can appeal within 2 months of issue. Most reviews are chargeable, whether or not they change your permit, and not paying the charges could lead to your permit being suspended or revoked. For a standard rules permit, the Environment Agency can change the rule set after consulting, and you have 3 months to comply with the new conditions.

Change, transfer or surrender your permit