What is an environmental permit?

An environmental permit is a document prepared by your regulator in England and Wales that controls the environmental impact of your business activities. It has conditions which you must follow to prevent your business from harming the environment or human health.

You must have an environmental permit if your business carries out any activity or operation that is covered by the term regulated facility. To find out what a regulated facility is, see our guidance on who needs an environmental permit.

You must get an environmental permit before you start operating a regulated facility. To find out what you must do, see our guidance on how to apply for an environmental permit.

What is an environmental permit condition?

A condition is something that limits or controls the environmental impact of your regulated facility. Your environmental permit will contain one or more conditions that are focussed on achieving an environmental outcome. A condition will not set out what you must do to meet the environmental outcome. You can decide how you will do this.

For example, your condition might say: ‘emissions from your activities shall be free from odour at levels likely to cause pollution outside your site…’. The environmental outcome is no odour pollution from your site. It is up to you to decide how you will achieve this.

You must comply with environmental permit conditions or you can be fined or sent to prison. To find out what you must do, see our guidance on how to comply with your environmental permit.

What types of environmental permit exist?

There are two main types of environmental permit:

standard permits
bespoke permits.

Standard permits

Standard permits are available to operators who want to comply with standard rules. They are cheaper, quicker and easier to apply for than bespoke permits.

The Environment Agency has developed standard rules for facilities that have similar environmental hazards, for example:

waste transfer stations
materials recycling facilities
low impact installation for the production of biofuel
keeping or using category 5 sealed radioactive sources
discharging 5-20 cubic metres per day of secondary treated domestic sewage to surface water
discharging water from a cooling circuit or heat exchanger to surface water.

You cannot change or appeal the standard rules. You will need to apply for a bespoke permit if your facility cannot comply with the standard rules.

Example standard permit from the Environment Agency (Adobe PDF - 36KB)

Environment Agency: Standard permits

Bespoke permits

Bespoke permits contain site-specific conditions. They are generally more expensive and take longer to process than a standard permit.

You should apply for a bespoke permit if your activities or operations:

are not covered by standard rules or you do not want to apply for a standard permit
could have a high impact on the environment
are innovative or complex.

Environment Agency: Bespoke permits

The Environment Agency uses a template to produce bespoke permits. The template contains a set of generic conditions as well as annexes that provide extra conditions for certain types of regulated facility.

Environment Agency: Generic permit template

If you have more than one existing environmental permit, your regulator may be able to combine them into a single consolidated permit. It will normally only do this if you agree to the consolidation.

Your permits can only be consolidated if they are from the same regulator, have the same operator and cover:

mobile plant on the same site or different sites
standard facilities on the same site and, in the future, standard facilities at different sites, unless the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) Directive applies to any of your standard facilities
regulated facilities on the same site.

If you are adding new facilities or starting up a new site with a range of regulated facilities they can all be covered by a single permit if they are regulated by the same regulator and you operate more than one:

regulated facility on the same site
standard facility on the same site and, in the future standard facilities at different sites, unless the IPPC Directive applies to any of the standard facilities
mobile plant on the same site or different sites
mobile radioactive apparatus on the same site or different sites.

At present, the Environment Agency cannot combine an environmental permit for a radioactive substances activity with another environmental permit.

In this guideline:

What is an environmental permit?