Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his presentation and introduction of the regulations. They are indeed a blockbuster, by any standards, of mind-boggling detail. I suppose that I should not grumble, because I remember that when we were discussing the previous lot of permitting regulations, among other considerations we had the whole question of lion faeces, only to discover that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, knew of spontaneous combustion of lion faeces. The reason that they were limited to five tonnes was obvious to us all as a result. It shows the virtues of our debates that we find out so much about the background. I accept what the Minister said: it is extremely useful to have so much of the environmental legislation in one volume to try to ease the burden on those who have to seek permits. The regulations are empowered under the Pollution Prevention and Control Act 1999, and bring under one roof, as it were, 18 directives. The Explanatory Memorandum summarises the European scrutiny history for six of those 18 directives, but does not contain scrutiny details for the rest. I wonder why not. It seems to be an anomaly that the background to those directives is not available to us. This has obviously been a magnum opus. It was passed to Committee on 24 February and brought to us exactly one week later. Frankly, it is difficult for noble Lords to get their minds around such detail in that short a time, so I may have missed some things. I seek clarification on specific points covered in the regulations, but first I ask why a document of this size and such detail does not carry on each page an indication of its subject matter. I know that legislation is different from an ordinary working document, and I understand why, but even an index would be helpful. It is a huge working document, and I wonder whether we are allowing previous form to dominate how we put such documents together. If it were properly annotated or indexed, it would be much easier for people to use it; it would make it much more user-friendly. Headings on the top of pages, supplementing the index at the beginning of the document, might help enormously, and a detailed contents list of subjects might also be useful. How many local authority recycling schemes will exceed the quantities specified in Chapter 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 3? That will clearly be important for existing recycling plants. Am I correct in supposing that, were the volume of waste to expand beyond the quantities specified, it would be sufficient to remove a certain proportion of it to another site? Could people avoid falling foul of the regulations by just setting up another site? Is that really in the public interest? Fluorescent tubes have a paragraph to themselves in Schedule 3 at page 113, with reference made to mercury concentration. I have not been able to find a specific reference to eco-friendly light bulbs, although I understand that environmental specialists are increasingly concerned that they are likely to pose a threat to the environment on disposal. What plans are in preparation for the treatment of such bulbs? Chapter 4 of Schedule 3 deals with the disposal of waste and, on page 122, the conditions for exempting disposal by incineration. Will those considerations result in the exemption of 600 or so farm incinerators that were caught by the original transposition of the EU waste directive, or will they be covered by Section 6.8 on page 78? I now turn to page 128, in Part 2, paragraph 2(e) and, on page 129, Part 3, paragraph (2)(f). They specify that all maintenance on small sewage treatment works is to be recorded and the records kept for at least five years after the work is done. Can the Minister confirm that those requirements will apply only to work carried out after 5 April this year? Regulation 62, on page 35, allows the Secretary of State or the Welsh Ministers to reserve for themselves the decisions on permits for a particular application or class of application. Will the Minister please give an example of each? Regulation 65 on page 36 relates to fees and charges, and gives the appropriate authority the duty to ensure that they cover a regulator’s expenditure. Is there anywhere a requirement that such expenditure has to be reasonable and comparable with equivalent work in the private sector, or are these fees self-determined by the regulator itself? Regulation 71 on page 40 requires local authorities to review all existing groundwater permits by 22 December 2012, to assess compliance with the terms of the permit, and to take steps to remedy any failure. According to table 1 of the impact assessment, there are 8,104 of these permits. Can the Minister assure me that these are spread evenly across all local authorities? If he cannot, will he supply a breakdown of the totals for the 10 most burdened authorities? There may be a considerable concentration of problems because of the nature of groundwater permitting. Regulation 74, also on page 40, relates to septic tanks and small sewage treatment plants with a discharge to ground of less than two cubic metres per day. We discussed these issues only recently in Grand Committee. They are to be exempted from effluent discharge controls, but after 1 January 2012 will have to be registered as exempt facilities. Will the Minister supply the detailed reference in the EU directive that demands such registration? Will he confirm that the French Government are introducing an identical requirement? Under Regulation 105 on page 49, mining operators are effectively given 13 months to sort out a permit for existing mining waste operations. I suspect that the Minister will know that the Associate Parliamentary Minerals Group has been much exercised on this matter, and I suspect that one or two of my noble friends might wish to speak on it. Is that period sufficient to encompass both the work and the information gathering required from the operator and the work, inspections and planning required from the regulator? That is especially important in the light of Regulation 31(4)(b), which removes the right of appeal against the refusal of a permit on the grounds that the information necessary for the construction of an emergency plan has not been supplied in time. How long will the emergency planner be allowed for his work? Are there any sanctions under UK legislation that the mining operator may invoke against a third party who is unwilling to supply necessary information within that given time span? This has put the industry under considerable pressure, and I hope that the Minister appreciates the concern that has been expressed. If a regulator refuses a permit under paragraph 14(2) of Schedule 20, which deals with the lack of an emergency plan, what is the timetable from that point to the serving of a closure notice under paragraph 10(2) of Schedule 20? Why does the list of operators interviewed as part of the cost-benefit research not include anyone from the extractive industries? On page 7 of the Explanatory Memorandum it states that final guidance will be published early in 2010. Has that happened? Page 10 refers to a provision that is not required by European legislation. Is there an exhaustive list of this and, if so, how may it be accessed? Paragraph 3.8 on page 33 of the Explanatory Memorandum covers the key assumptions in the cost-benefit modelling for small sewage treatment plants. It contains the following statement at sub-paragraph b: ""The baseline accounts for 40 minutes of industry time for permit applications as conducted by a conveyancer during house sales. However, significant sensitivity surrounds this assumption. It is possible that the application process may match that for a simple standard permit, in this case four hours may be expected"." Paragraph 3.23 on page 39 states: ""It is estimated that around 250,000 SSTPs … will come under regulation, but it may be nearer 500,000"." The Explanatory Memorandum contains an estimate that there are some 20,000 sales per annum in the UK of new SSTPs. In the light of these figures, it is important to be assured that the entirety of the rules governing the registration of discharge exemptions is mandated by the European directive. It is also imperative that the registration system is as simple and as quick as possible. Although the Explanatory Memorandum contains pages of cost calculations and savings estimates, there is not much to indicate the complexity or otherwise of the systems in use. However, on page 50, table 15 shows how the savings of implementing these regulations are reached. My eye was taken by the Environment Agency’s set-up costs, which show in detail the personnel required to do this for the four sites currently subject to the permitting requirements of the batteries directive. Taken on its own, the set-up costs for a year comprised half a project manager, a half of each of finance, communications, policy and process experts, and a third of a legal person. There is also a cost of £36,800 for the input of a project board. These are substantial figures and give some idea of the costs that may be involved for authorities in implementing these regulations. Integrating the batteries permits with others under these new regulations apparently reduces the set-up to a third of each of a policy expert and a process expert and reduces the ongoing personnel requirement from a whole policy and a whole process to a quarter of each. None the less, it gives one an idea of the scale of the operations that lie behind this substantial volume. I hope I am not alone in feeling that the services of a good method-study engineer would not go amiss in assessing the way in which these regulations could be handled to reduce the cost on the public purse that may well be involved. The reduction of the burden of these regulations is welcomed by all. However, I remain uneasy that these regulations contain some unnecessary elements. I am even more concerned that some may have been subject to cost analysis as though they are required in order to improve the cost-benefit figures, above all to Schedule 2.