How you’ll be regulated: environmental permits for radioactive substances activities
About Radioactive Substances Compliance Assessment Reports, assessments and inspections and what the Environment Agency will do if you do not follow the rules.
Applies to England
You must follow all the conditions of your radioactive substances activity permit. The Environment Agency will check you’re complying with your permit and you’re continuing to be a competent operator. They can take your permit away (revoke it) if they decide you’re not a suitable operator.
If you apply to transfer a radioactive substances activity permit to another person, the Environment Agency can reject the application if they decide the person is not a competent operator.
Assessments and inspections
Your radioactive substances activity may be checked by the Environment Agency by:
- an assessment – a desk based check of whether you’re complying with your permit, for example checking you’re sending in required information
- an inspection – where an officer visits your site
Inspections are usually planned, but can be unannounced. Environment Agency staff will look around your site and ask questions about what you’re doing. They may ask to see documents or talk to your staff.
Where possible, the Environment Agency will work with other regulators, such as the Office for Nuclear Regulation, the Health and Safety Executive, Care Quality Commission or Counter Terrorism Security Advisers, to co-ordinate inspections and keep the number of visits you receive to a minimum.
For nuclear sites there will be a programme of inspections planned throughout the year.
For non-nuclear sites, inspection visits will take place every 1 to 4 years.
For both nuclear and non-nuclear sites, the number of inspection visits you receive will depend on the complexity of your activity and hazard of the radioactive substances you use.
The Environment Agency may also assess or inspect your activity if there has been an environmental incident at your site.
Radioactive Substances Compliance Assessment Reports
If Environment Agency staff carry out an assessment, inspection or attend an incident, they will complete a Radioactive Substances Compliance Assessment Report (RASCAR) and give you a copy.
The RASCAR will record anything you’re doing that does not comply with your permit and state what you have to do to correct this.
The Environment Agency uses a standard approach called the Compliance Classification Scheme to classify permit breaches.
Enforcement
The Environment Agency may take action if they suspect you’ve breached a condition of your permit or otherwise broken the law, or in some cases if they think you’re about to. Their actions might include:
- giving you advice
- changing your permit conditions
- revoking your permit – this means you will no longer have a permit and will be unable to carry on your radioactive substances activity
- serving you with an enforcement notice, which will state what you have to do to fix problems and by when
- serving you with a suspension notice if there’s a risk you might cause pollution – this means you have to stop carrying out your activity
- prosecuting you if they think it’s in the public interest
The Environment Agency’s enforcement and sanctions policy explains the enforcement and sanction options they can use and how they make enforcement decisions.
Permit reviews
The Environment Agency regularly reviews all the permits granted for radioactive substances activities, to check that they reflect the latest regulations and environmental standards.
The Environment Agency can also review your permit if you’re not complying with it. You may have to apply for a change to your permit, or you may get new conditions.
Changes to standard rules permits
If you have a standard rules permit, the Environment Agency can change the conditions of its rule set.
Before the Environment Agency changes a rule set, they will hold a consultation and write to any permit holders who could be affected by the changes.
They will give you 3 months to comply with the new conditions.
Contact
Contact the Environment Agency if you have questions about your permit or how they will regulate you.
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.