Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if her Department will issue guidance to (a) the Environment Agency and (b) local authority officers setting out their respective powers to (i) identify an odour and (ii) take enforcement action against an alleged producer of an odour.

Owners of industrial, trade and business premises are expected to use the best practicable means available to reduce odours, effluvia and other potential sources of statutory nuisance emanating from their place of work in the first place. If this is not happening, then Local Authorities have powers through the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to investigate and issue abatement notices to stop the problem from re-occurring if they determine a statutory nuisance exists.

For certain categories of industrial installations regulated under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016 (EPR), the Environment Agency (EA) and Local Authorities regulate odour pollution through conditions in environmental permits. Operators of these sites have to use appropriate measures or best available techniques (BAT or UKBAT where it exists) to develop management controls to prevent, or, where that is not possible, to reduce odour pollution.

The EA uses permitting and enforcement tools to tackle odour pollution from the sites it regulates. These are used on a sliding scale ranging from advice and guidance to criminal prosecutions for serious pollution incidents, principally through powers from the EPRs.

Statutory guidance, which is updated from time to time, is already available for the EA and local authorities on how the EPRs should be implemented.