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

Ref: LIT 65919

HTML

HTML

HTML

Ref: LIT 12665

HTML

How the Environment Agency assesses and scores compliance for:

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

16 January 2024
Updated the 'explaining the outcomes' section of each attachment to explain how to appeal a regulatory decision.
29 March 2023
Added the attachment 'Abstraction and impounding activities: assessing licence compliance'.
15 January 2020
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 July 2019
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.
2 April 2019
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.
14 January 2019
First published.