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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many (a) unannounced and (b) announced inspections the Environment Agency have undertaken at clinical waste operators in the UK in each of the last five years.

The Environment Agency (EA) uses a range of methods to monitor waste site compliance, including audits, data reviews, and site inspections.

The table below shows the number of checks which the EA has undertaken for healthcare waste sites in England in each of the last four years. The EA does not centrally record numbers of announced and unannounced inspections, however the majority of inspections are unannounced.

Information for 2014 is not included because a new system for recording checks was introduced in 2015 and earlier information is not centrally recorded.