Licensing reforms: information for environment protection licence holders
The EPA has updated how environment protection licences are managed to improve reporting, enhance transparency and better detect environmental risks.
The requirement for licensees to submit an Annual Return has been replaced by the requirement to report a non-compliance within 21 days of becoming aware of it. Licensees are required to report through eConnect EPA.
Load-based licence (LBL) holders will still need to submit a simplified Annual Return to report LBL data which is used to calculate the annual fee.
This change will support more timely communication with the EPA about reported non-compliances, potential changes in environmental risks, and any necessary follow-up actions.
The EMC Protocol has been amended to introduce a fairer, simpler system that’s easier to understand.
Updates to the Protocol
Compliance history and regulatory response
The following regulatory actions are no longer counted in environmental management weightings:
- regulatory actions for late or non‑submission of an Annual Return
- formal warnings
- incident‑related site inspections.
All other regulatory actions continue to apply.
How the 3-year period of regulatory actions is considered
The previous “trend” approach has been removed. A regulatory score is calculated for each of the past 3 years (number of regulatory actions X environmental weighting) and the 3 yearly scores are added together to obtain the environmental management score.
Score reductions
Although encouraged for licensees, environmental management systems and practices no longer receive a reduction in the protocol. Reductions are still available for environmental improvement programs (EIPs). These are programs agreed to between the EPA and the licensee and attached as a condition to the licence.
Environmental management categories
The upper and lower thresholds used to allocate categories have been adjusted to maintain a similar distribution of licensees across categories A–E compared with the past distribution. The total environmental management score will determine a licensee’s environmental management category as follows:
| Total environmental management score | Environmental management category |
|---|---|
| 0–10 | A |
| 11–110 | B |
| 111–190 | C |
| 191–400 | D |
| 400+ | E |
The introduction of a requirement to submit near real-time monitoring data is being explored in a staged approach.
Access to more timely data will enable the EPA to work collaboratively with licensees to identify emerging trends and take proactive steps to minimise potential environmental harm.
In the short term, licensees are required to submit an annual summary of monitoring data (reporting maximum, minimum, and mean values) as an Excel file in eConnect at the end of each licence reporting period.
In the longer term, near real-time data submission may be required. The EPA is also exploring options to host and display monitoring data provided by licensees.
The 5-year Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA), which focused on predominantly static risk factors, has been replaced by dynamic risk indicators (DRIs). DRIs are used to identify changes in environmental risk, enabling early responses to increasing risks and more effective targeting of regulatory resources at both the individual licence level and the broader strategic level. Indicators include non-compliances, site inspection outcomes, incidents and community reports, changes in operating factors, and monitoring data.
Inspections of licensed premises will be carried out at least once every three years. Additional inspections may occur proactively or responsively, in line with the EPA’s Regulatory Policy.