Guidance

Pig and Poultry Assurance Scheme

Updated 22 July 2020

The Pig and Poultry Assurance Scheme is for pig and poultry farmers who achieve high standards of compliance with their environmental permit.

How the scheme works

The scheme is voluntary. Every farm that joins will:

• save around £940 a year on Environment Agency charges
• have one Environment Agency inspection every 3 years
• have an annual inspection by their nominated certification body in the other 2 years
• have joint inspections with other assurance schemes, such as Red Tractor Assurance or the Lion Code of Practice, to save time and reduce biosecurity risks

You do not need to be a member of another farm assurance scheme to join the Pig and Poultry Assurance Scheme.

The certification body will charge you for their visit. It’s up to each certification body how much they charge. If you choose not to join the scheme we’ll continue to inspect on a frequency determined by the environmental risk of your farm and charge you as normal.

When you join the scheme we’ll give your nominated certification body a copy of your permit. Your certification body will collect data for us in the years we do not inspect. The information the certification body collects will help us assess if a farm is complying with its permit.

You can decide not to join but join in a later year if your farm remains eligible.

You can continue to contact your local Environment Agency officer at any time for advice.

Certification bodies will use the same inspection form that the Environment Agency uses on their farm visits.

Who can join the scheme

To be eligible for the scheme a farm must:

• have had at least 2 inspections since its permit was issued
• comply with permit condition 1.1
• implement all improvement conditions within the approved timescale

To be eligible for the scheme a farm must not:

• have an improvement condition relating to ammonia emissions
• be subject to outstanding enforcement action by the Environment Agency
• be operated by someone who has, in relation to that farm, received a conviction in the previous 3 years for a case brought by the Environment Agency, or have accepted a formal caution in relation to such an offence in the previous 2 years
• have more than 10 Compliance Classification Scheme points in the previous calendar year
• have any unresolved amenity issues or be a site of high public interest
• be in arrears for environmental permitting regulations charges

Enforcement action

Outstanding enforcement action is:

• any formal caution that has been offered but not accepted
• any prosecutions that are pending or have begun but have not yet gone to court, or have gone to court but the judgement is being appealed
• any notices which have been issued but not fully complied with
• activities that led to a warning letter being issued, including awaiting a decision in respect of enforcement action
• carrying out an enforcement response
• carrying out a post-conviction plan

Outstanding enforcement action is not:

• any prosecution that has gone before court and any fines and costs that have been accepted and not subject to an appeal
• any formal caution that has been offered and accepted
• any notices that have been issued as long as the conditions within them have been met

How to join the scheme

We assess permitted farms that are not members of the scheme in January each year to decide if they’re eligible to join.

In February each year we’ll write to operators of eligible farms to invite them to join the next scheme year starting in April.

If you want to join the scheme, you must contact one of the approved certification bodies specified in your invitation letter by the date given in your letter. Ask the certification body for details of their procedures and how much they will charge.

You can choose to leave the scheme part way through the year, but you’ll have to pay the higher non-member subsistence charge, pro-rata from the date you left the scheme.

You do not need to renew your scheme membership every year. Your farm remains in the scheme as long as it is not expelled.

You do not have to contact your certification body before the next scheme year, unless you want to change your certification body. Your certification body will contact you to request their annual payment.

If a farm has been transferred to you, it can remain in the scheme as long as the next 2 visits have a Compliance Classification Scheme score of 10 points or less. If you vary your permit your farm will remain in the scheme.

If your farm has no livestock it can remain in the scheme but it does not need to be visited. You must let us know when you restock so inspections can begin again.

Farm visit results

We’ll write to tell you the results of each visit. If your farm is complying with its permit, no further action will be taken until the next inspection, unless a complaint or incident is reported that requires a visit.

If there are areas of non-compliance but you’ve already agreed a correction plan with your Environment Agency officer, you do not need to take any further action. We’ll write to you to confirm this.

If there are any non-compliances that are not already being dealt with in a correction plan, we’ll write to tell you. After assessing the information collected by your certification body we may decide to visit your farm, for example, to address urgent non-compliances or potential and actual incidents.

We’ll put the results of all farm inspections on the public register.

When a farm may be expelled

Your farm may be expelled if:

• it does not comply with an enforcement notice or any notice served by the Environment Agency, including Pollution Inventory returns
• it is prosecuted by the Environment Agency
• it accepts a formal caution for a breach
• you do not pay your environmental permitting regulations charges
• it does not have a certification body visit in a year when it’s due, or fails, or does not cooperate with the certification body to arrange visits, provide access to relevant areas and records, or does not pay for a visit
• you do not make improvements to rectify non-compliance within agreed timescales or refuse to agree reasonable timescales - the Environment Agency may exercise discretion in extenuating circumstances
• it scores more than 30 Compliance Classification Scheme points in a calendar year
• it scores more than 10 Compliance Classification Scheme points per visit for the next 2 visits (one by the certification body, one by the Environment Agency officer) after the farm has been transferred from one operator to another
• it has more than 10 breaches in a visit
• there is gross failure of permit condition 1.1
• it is designated as a site of high public interest
• we believe your farm is not being well managed in accordance with the aims of the scheme

If your farm is expelled from the scheme, it will revert to the higher non-member subsistence charge from the date it’s expelled. Your farm will not be able to rejoin the scheme until the Environment Agency officer has carried out 2 more visits and is satisfied that the farm is able to return.

Contact

Contact your Environment Agency officer to find out more about joining the scheme.

General enquiries

National Customer Contact Centre
PO Box 544
Rotherham
S60 1BY

Email enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk

Telephone 03708 506 506

Telephone from outside the UK (Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm GMT) +44 (0) 114 282 5312

Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.