News

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:

  1. Fixed monetary penalty (FMP) notices – under which a regulator will be able to impose a monetary penalty of a fixed amount.
  2. Discretionary requirements – which will enable a regulator to impose one or more of the following:
    1. a variable monetary penalty (VMP);
    2. a requirement to take specified steps within a stated period to secure that an offence does not continue or happen again (compliance notice); and
    3. 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).
  3. 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.
  4. 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.