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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.

Updates to this page

From:
Environment Agency
Published:
14 January 2019
Last updated:
5 June 2026
Show all updates

  1. Added new document "Flood Risk Activities: assessing environmental permit compliance".

  2. Discharges to surface water and groundwater, section 'Explaining the outcomes of a compliance assessment' added information about the phased publication of CAR forms to the Environment Agency’s online public register on GOV.UK.

  3. Updated all the attachments to explain the timeframe for appealing a regulatory decision and linked to guidance on this. Updated 'Radioactive substances activities: assessing licence compliance', in the section 'Explaining the outcomes of a compliance assessment' to clarify when the Environment Agency send draft RASCARs to nuclear operators and how to appeal a regulatory decision. Updated Principle 6 in 'Waste operations and installations: assessing and scoring environmental compliance' to say that the Environment Agency will consider the wider impact on climate change for incidents involving the release of greenhouse gas.

  4. Updated the 'explaining the outcomes' section of each attachment to explain how to appeal a regulatory decision.

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

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. First published.

Applies to England

Documents

Abstraction and impounding activities: assessing licence compliance

Ref: LIT 65919

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Discharges to surface water and groundwater: assessing environmental permit compliance

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Radioactive substances activities: assessing environmental permit compliance

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Waste operations and installations: assessing and scoring environmental permit compliance

Ref: LIT 12665

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Flood risk activities: assessing environmental permit compliance

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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
  • flood risk activities

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

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