Targeted
Risk Based Approaches to Compliance Assessment
UKCC20
January 2009
Background to research
In April 2008, SNIFFER commissioned WRc to undertake a study to improve
its understanding of the relationship between inspections1 of regulated
operators, and their level of compliance, so that the regulators (the
Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and the Northern Ireland
Environment Agency (NIEA)) could manage inspection programmes more
effectively.
Currently, the notion that an increased frequency of inspection leads
to increased compliance appears to be supported only by anecdotal
evidence, and has not been clearly or unequivocally demonstrated. The
literature indicates that other aspects could explain the level of, and
variation in, compliance: the industrial sector to which the firm
belongs, the company’s culture, the size of the company or the site,
the time since its last inspection, the presence in the vicinity of a
company/site from the same sector which has been found non-compliant,
and the time (season) of the inspection.
Objectives of research
The aim of this project was to improve our understanding of the
relationship between inspections and compliance, and to make some
suggestions on how the regulators could:
- improve compliance by modifying the way they inspect and
- improve ways of storing data and monitoring compliance.
Fundamentally the project sought to answer the question, ‘do more
inspections equate to greater compliance?’ This was achieved by
undertaking a retrospective analysis of available data at two
hierarchical levels:
- Level 1: Inter-system analysis – comparing inspection rates and
level of compliance among all the regulatory systems;
- Level 2: Intra-system analysis – a more detailed assessment of
the relationship between inspection and compliance for each regulatory
system separately.
The two types of analysis provided complementary information about the
effect of the inspection programme on levels of compliance.
Seven regulatory systems were assessed in this study:
- Controlled Activities Regulations point source discharges,
(Scotland CAR)
- Pollution Prevention and Control Part A, (Scotland PPC Part A)
- Pollution Prevention and Control Part B, (Scotland PPC Part B)
- Waste Management Licensing, (Scotland WML)
- Water Order industrial discharges, (Northern Ireland WO
industrial discharges)
- Registered Standards, (Northern Ireland Water Utility Sector
Discharges)
- Waste Management Licensing, (Northern Ireland
WML)
The study focused on available data in SEPA and NIEA from three broad
regulatory systems as follows:
- Licensing of point source discharges to water under the
Controlled Activities Regulation (CAR) in Scotland and the Water
Order in Northern Ireland;
- Integrated licensing of industrial sites under the Pollution
Prevention and Control (PPC) system (Part A and Part B); and
- Licensing of (non-PPC) waste management sites (including scrap
yards and re-processors) under Waste Management Legislation.
Within these systems, PPC Part A and Part B were treated
separately. The industrial discharges regulated under the Water
(NI) Order and the water utility discharges regulated under a similar
system using Registered Standards for 2005 to 2006 were also treated
separately (Appendix 3 provides details about what data was available
for use in this study). Prior to April 2007, the water utility
sector discharges from Water Service were not controlled under the
Water (NI) Order as Water Service was part of Central Government and
had “crown immunity. However conditions to control their environmental
impact were set in Registered Standards.
The Scottish data were studied for a three year period (from mid 2005
up to July 2008). For Northern Ireland, data were studied over the
period 2005-2007. The data that were used in the study were from the
routine inspection programme and data from non-routine inspections
undertaken in response to non-compliance, a pollution incident, or a
complaint, were not used. Northern Ireland discharge data was derived
from sampling data obtained from end of pipe regulatory sampling
(Industrial Discharges) and self monitoring (Water Utility Discharges).
1 In this
report the term ‘inspections’ includes sampling as well as site
inspection
Copies of this report are available from the Foundation, in electronic
format on CDRom at £20.00 + VAT or hard copy at £35.00, less 20% to FWR
members.
N.B. The
report is available for download from the SNIFFER Website