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Environmental Permitting Programme - Reasons for change

Permitting and compliance systems have developed separately over time and have adopted different procedures and rules despite aiming for the same goal which is to protect the environment and human health. This has led to a regulatory system that is unnecessarily complex. In line with feedback from both industry and regulators we feel that the permitting systems need to be modernised to increase efficiency and flexibility.

• Respondents to the first EPP consultation (spring 2006) broadly agreed with the principle of the EPP being a platform for the future.
• Defra's Five Year Strategy contains a commitment to a programme, dedicated to "progressively putting different regulatory streams on to a common footing, supported by more streamlined systems".
• The Hampton report (March 2005) recommended proportionality in regulation by the application of effective risk-based approaches. Its follow-up review, the Hampton Implementation Review on the Environment Agency, lists EPP1 as a positive example of Defra and the Environment Agency working on streamlining and rationalising processes for business and therefore encouraging economic progress.
• Better Regulation Task Force report (March 2005) highlighted that the procedures for IPPC [integrated pollution prevention and control] and waste management are different, yet their objective to protect the environment is the same.
• Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report on The Environment Agency welcomed the development of a common regulatory framework and recommended extension of this common framework to other systems.
• The EPP featured as a “best practice” case study in the EU Best Project Report. The report noted the system’s capability of extension as its key feature (to later contain other systems such as water quality and radioactive substances).
• The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) guide on how to implement European Directive effectively (2007) gave the EPP, with subsequent expansion to other environmental permitting systems, as an example of good practice in implementing directives.

Page last modified: 29 May 2008
Page published: 2 October 2005

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