Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department holds data on the number of Industrial Emissions Directive environmental permits that have been issued by the Environment Agency in each year since 2015.
Environmental permits are issued under the Environmental Permitting Regulations (England and Wales) 2016, which implement the Industrial Emissions Directive. Of the activities listed in the Industrial Emissions Directive, the Environment Agency (EA) is responsible for regulating larger (known as A1) sites under the 2016 Regulations in England, whereas local authorities regulate smaller sized (known as A2) sites.
The number of permits issued by the EA under the 2016 Regulations relating to activities in the Industrial Emissions Directive is set out below. Data for the whole year 2023 is incomplete.
Year | Total issued |
2015 | 236 |
2016 | 303 |
2017 | 284 |
2018 | 265 |
2019 | 161 |
2020 | 167 |
2021 | 178 |
2022 | 118 |
2023 | 70 |
The number of permits issued is governed by regulatory, economic and social drivers. The capacity of the regulator and application quality and application size and complexity are all relevant factors.
Some drivers that may have affected the number of new applications: