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(asked on 5th January 2024) - View Source

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.


Answered by
Robbie Moore Portrait
Robbie Moore
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 12th March 2024

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:

  • Greater numbers in 2015, 2016 etc driven by new activities being prescribed under the Industrial Emissions Directive and subject to environmental permitting.
  • There is a general trend of fewer applications being made over recent years.
  • Fewer applications were received and processed during 2020, 2021 and 2022 due to the pandemic and capacity issues.

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