Graphical version

SCOTTISH EXECUTIVE

[Previous] [Contents] [Next]

Environmental Protection Act 1990 Part1: A Practical Guide: Central Control

2. ORIGINS AND OBJECTIVES OF IPC

2.1 Releases from major polluters to the three environmental media of air, water and land have traditionally been subject to three distinct control regimes. Powers under the Alkali etc Works Regulation Act 1906 and the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974 have provided for the control of air emissions by requirement for prior registration and for the operator to use the "best practicable means" for the prevention or amelioration of emissions to atmosphere. Discharges to water have been controlled by river purification authorities by a system of "consents to discharge" required by virtue of powers in successive river pollution prevention statutes, and most recently in Part 11 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974 as amended by Schedule 23 to the Water Act 1989. Solid waste arisings have not previously been regulated by local waste disposal authorities acting under Part 1 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974.

2.2 The Fifth Report of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (1976 - Cmnd - 6371) proposed that polluting releases should be directed to the environmental medium where the least environmental damage woild be done. This proposal was accompanied by the recommendation that a body be created with responsibility for ensuring that wastes were disposed so as to minimise effects in all three environmental media, thus achieving the optimum environmental solution overall. This is the basis of the term Best Practicable Environmental Option (BPEO) which is a key element of IPC (see also paragraph 6.16 below).

2.3 These recommendations were reinforced in a scrutiny report on pollution control by the Cabinet Office Efficiency Unit in 1986. This reported that for as long as the three environmental media were treated separately there was a danger that the allocation of resources would not reflect an overall view of where the problems were most severe; and that the end result would be a haphazard disposal of pollutants unrelated to an overall assessment of the optimum solution for the environment as a whole.

2.4 The main objectives of IPC are:

  1. to prevent or minimise the release of prescribed substances and to render harmless any such substances which are released;

  2. to develop an approach to pollution control that considers discharges from industrial processes to all media in the context of the effect on the environment as a whole.

It has the following additional aims:

  1. to streamline and strengthen the regulatory system, clarifying the roles and responsibilities of HMIPI, the RPAs and other regulatory authorities, and the companies they regulate;

  2. to contain the burden on industry, in particular by providing for a "one stop shop" on pollution control for the potentially most seriously polluting processes;

  3. to maintain public confidence in the regulatory system by producing a transparent system that is accessible and easy to understand and clear and simple in operation

  4. to ensure that the system will respond flexibly, both to changing pollution abatement technology and to new knowledge on the effects of pollutants; and

  5. to provide the means to fulfil international obligations relating to environmental protection.

[Previous] [Contents] [Next]