Consultation hub

For your views on proposed changes to our charging scheme for waste, water, and industrial activities regulated through our Integrated Authorisation Framework (IAF). We also sought feedback on calculating the charges, revising the charging descriptions, and making other changes.

You broadly supported the proposed changes to charges for water and industrial activities, with nearly all respondents in agreement. Most of you also supported the proposed changes to waste activity charges, though a few raised concerns or disagreed. We received 28 responses in total, mostly from businesses.

Take your comments and feedback into account, making changes to our proposals as a result. Full details of what you told us and our responses are available in our Consultation Digest.

As part of our review of Potentially Vulnerable Areas (PVAs) for flood risk management in Scotland, we asked for your views on:

• Moving to community-scale PVAs.
• Designating specific communities as PVAs.
• Improving SEPA’s flood preparedness tools and resources.

• 64% of you agreed with our approach, describing it as sensible and fair. However, 10% of you disagreed, raising concerns about gaps in addressing surface water flooding and the accuracy of our flood data.
•  71% of you supported the move to community-scale PVAs, saying it made the designations clearer and more relevant locally. Some of you, however, expressed concerns about how this change might shift responsibilities for flood management.
• 52% of you agreed with the proposed designations for your local areas, but 33% disagreed, citing concerns about flood data accuracy, potential impacts on property sales, and insurance premiums.
• You told us that our flood preparedness resources need to be more user-friendly and accessible.

We discussed your feedback with local authorities and made several changes to community designations. We added Finavon and Kinbuck as new PVAs based on evidence received from the consultation. We expanded the boundaries for Bannockburn and Oban to better match their community boundaries. For Golspie, we updated the PVA description to clarify the flood risks. Additionally, we will use your feedback to improve SEPA’s flood tools, making them easier to understand and use. These changes will help us refine our flood risk management plans to meet community needs.

In January 2024, we sought your views on the type of authorisation that we propose to use for the authorisation of waste management, water, and industrial activities under the Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 (EASR 2018). We also provided an explanation, where necessary, on why an activity requires the type of authorisation proposed. 

In the consultation, we asked two types of question: 

1. Those where we sought agreement for our proposed approach on the type, tier and wording of an activity and authorisation that would be required. 

2. Those where we were seeking views that will help us to develop future consultations on, for example, the wording of standard conditions. 

The consultation was open from 17 January 2024 to 12 April 2024.

In total, we received 63 consultation responses from stakeholders. 

Overall, the response was positive, with 83.7% of respondents agreeing to our proposed approach on the type, tier and wording of the activities and authorisations.

See our consultation summary for more details.

We have taken on board your comments and feedback and made some changes to our proposals. For example, to some activity thresholds and updating some activity descriptions to make them clearer. Where you fed back that further clarity was need, we have reviewed this and will integrated into future proposals that we will consult on in due course.

Read our Consultation digest for more information on the responses we received and what we have done in response.