My Lords, the draft 2016 regulations consolidate and update the rules that enable businesses to carry out a wide range of activities without harming the environment or human health.
As noble Lords know, businesses that manage potentially damaging activities—such as landfill sites, sewage treatment plants, disposal of waste electrical and electronic equipment and flood risk activities—require an environmental permit in order to operate. The environmental permitting regime, in place since 2007, sets out the rules for applying for and regulating permits and rationalises the previous regimes into a common framework. A key component is that it allows applicants to make one application and be issued with one permit for a single site, where previously they would have required several permits. It is designed to
make the process of obtaining a permit more predictable for businesses while maintaining a strong level of environmental protection.
The Environment Agency is the regulator for activities involving waste operations and radioactive substances, while local authorities regulate, for example, solvent emission activities and certain types of installation and mobile plant. The regime contains different levels of control, based on risk: exclusions, which are very low-risk activities that may be undertaken without any permit; exemptions, which are lower-risk activities that may be undertaken after registering, which is free; standard rules permits, for specified activities; and bespoke permits, for unique or higher-risk activities.
The draft regulations consolidate the previous legislation, which has been the subject of 15 sets of amendments. The consolidation and updating of the legislation will make the rules more accessible and transparent, helping to reduce the administrative burden on businesses. The consolidation is primarily a tidying-up exercise done in the interests of good administration. The principles of environmental permitting, and in particular the strong protection of the environment, remain. Those who responded to the 2015 public consultation exercise welcomed the consolidation.
Although this is primarily a consolidation exercise, there are two areas of substantive change. The first concerns an exemption for the crushing of fluorescent lamps. This type of tube lighting is commonly found in large offices and other buildings such as hospitals. Many of these lamps contain mercury, which is considered hazardous to humans and the environment. The exemption for the crushing of these lamps is called exemption T17. It allows the use of specifically designed mobile crushing equipment to reduce the volume of waste lamps before they are collected. The mercury emissions are captured by the equipment and the crushed material is then transported to a permitted site later in the day. This provides lamp recyclers with an alternative to collecting and transporting lamps whole.
The draft regulations restrict the situations in which the T17 exemption can be used, reducing the quantity of lamps that can be crushed at a site. They also clarify the conditions for operation of the lamp-crushing equipment required by EU law, making it clear that impermeable surfaces and waterproof covering are required for areas where crushing is carried out.
This change prevents large-scale lamp-crushing operations being carried out without a permit, while allowing smaller-scale operations to continue under the exemption but with enhanced conditions. It strengthens the protection of human health and the environment and levels the playing field for competing businesses that use different approaches to the collection of lamps for recycling. It does so while maintaining flexibility in lamp-collection options for the recycling industry, thereby minimising the impact on collection costs for business. The consultation on this change was carried out at the start of this year and received a positive response.
As a result of this amendment, a permit will now be required in some cases where there was previously an exemption. However, at present we are aware of only
one business that is considering applying for a permit, and note that it responded positively to the consultation proposal.
The second change concerns the rules on dredging. There was an error in an earlier amendment to the regulations which transferred flood-risk activities from the previous scheme which regulated those activities into the permitting regime. It concerns the rules for an exemption from the need to apply for a permit for dredging by the Canal & River Trust and other organisations with the statutory function to undertake dredging—called statutory undertakers—such as navigation authorities.
Unfortunately, the amending regulations made in April 2016 inadvertently brought those statutory undertakers into the scheme because of a typographical error. We want to rectify that. The amendment reinstates the position that existed under the previous scheme, where those organisations with a statutory function to undertake dredging did not have to apply for a permit.
Following the consultation on bringing flood-risk activities into the environmental permitting regime, it was made clear in the Government’s response of January 2016 that the intention was to replicate this exemption from the requirement for a permit. We are therefore putting this right.
The regulations will continue to ensure that the environment and human health are protected from harmful activities, while also making the law more accessible and thereby reducing burdens on business. For these reasons, I commend the regulations to the House.
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