Environment and Planning Overview

9 in 10 visits from the Environmental Protection Agency are unannounced. While many of the more than 1,500 site visits they carry out each year are routine, the few that lead to enforcement action are serious. For those, it is common for directors, officers and managers to be interviewed and, often, to receive a criminal summons.

The EPA is far from the only enforcement authority. Every local authority nationwide has significant powers of entry, inspection and inquiry, where your responses will drive the final outcome.

For your company, apart from fines and costs, the outcome may require a change in business practice or affect your status as a “fit and proper person” to hold a licence.  It may require disclosure in your bids for public contracts or to other purchasers. The potential for harm to reputation is also great, as these matters are often widely reported.

For you personally, your consent or neglect to anything wrong done by the company exposes you to prosecution, fines and, in serious cases, imprisonment.

Our work

We can help. Our Head of Environment and Planning spent five years on the side of the prosecutor, representing the Agency in prosecutions nationwide. We understand the significance of the investigation process. We have sat alongside persons of interest in an investigation, supporting throughout the process. Our team has worked with licence-holders to defend their regulatory compliance position, where a shadow is cast by an open compliance investigation, incident notification, notification of non-conformance or ranking on the National Priority Sites System.