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Fairer and Better Environmental Enforcement: Implementing the new civil sanctions

Proposals on new civil sanction enforcement powers.

Starting date: 15 February 2010
Closing date: 7 May 2010

Consultation summary

Environmental regulations give enforcement powers to regulators so that they can ensure that laws are complied with and the environment and people are protected.

The Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008 (the RES Act) introduced a new range of alternative civil (rather than criminal court) sanctions. These have been made available to the Environment Agency in England and Wales for use when an offence has been committed and a sanction is needed. Their introduction provides us with a wider range of sanctioning options to better protect the environment and supports a more responsive approach to working with businesses.

We would like you to take part in this consultation to help us implement the new civil sanction enforcement powers. We have set out how these have come about and how we propose to implement them. We need your feedback to ensure that we are delivering the best for business, people and the environment through our enforcement activities.

How to respond and view the consultation documents

We would prefer you to respond online. This will help us to gather and summarise responses quickly and accurately.

However, if you would prefer to send your response by post, please send it to:

Civil Sanctions Consultation, Better Regulation Policy Team, Environment Agency, Block 1 Government Buildings, Burghill Road, Westbury on Trym, Bristol, BS10 6BF

Or email your response to civil sanctions. Also email civil sanctions to request a hard copy.

What happens next

We will publish our full response to the consultation within 6 weeks of the consultation closing date, 21 June 2010. This will include information on responders, a summary of views and our decisions made in light of the consultation. We will circulate this to all consultees and other interested parties. Please tell us on your response if you want us to treat it as confidential.

We will also publish the guidance based on this feedback on 21 June. This is because we need to allow 12 weeks from the publication of guidance before we can implement the activity. We expect use of the civil sanctions to start in September 2010.