Environmental Update (February 2010)
NEW powers for environmental regulators
The Environment Agency has been granted new civil powers to
fight environmental crime. This will make it easier to punish
businesses and individuals who breach environmental
regulations.
The new powers have been introduced in the Regulatory
Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008; part 3 contains the
enabling powers to introduce 4 new civil sanctions:
- Fixed monetary penalty (FMP) notices – under
which a regulator will be able to impose a monetary penalty of a
fixed amount.
- Discretionary requirements – which will enable
a regulator to impose one or more of the following:
- a variable monetary penalty (VMP);
- a requirement to take specified steps within a stated period to
secure that an offence does not continue or happen again
(compliance notice); and
- a requirement to take specified steps within a stated period to
secure that the position is restored, so far as possible, to what
it would have been if no offence had been committed
(restoration notice).
- Stop notices – which will prevent a business
from carrying on an activity described in the notice until it has
taken steps to come back into compliance.
- Enforcement undertakings – which will enable a
business, which a regulator reasonably suspects of having committed
an offence, to give an undertaking to a regulator to take one or
more corrective actions set out in the undertaking.
These new civil sanctions will give the Environment Agency the
discretion to avoid the time consuming and costly process of having
to take businesses that commit certain types of offences to court.
The new powers mean that it will become easier to punish
those who break the law. Despite this, the Environment
Agency will still take criminal cases against business and
individuals that cause deliberate, reckless and grave environmental
damage.
The Environment Agency will be consulting with business from
February 2010 to help shape how the new powers will be
implemented.
For more information on environmental legislation and
compliance, please contact the Mentor Environmental Service, on
0800 634 7006.