Does your business require an environmental permit or a pollution prevention and control permit?

Your business may require an environmental permit (England and Wales) or a pollution prevention and control (PPC) permit (Northern Ireland and Scotland) from your environmental regulator or local council. For example, you will need a permit if your business has a production capacity above a certain level or if you use certain hazardous substances.

There are different categories of permit:

• England and Wales: Part A(1), Part A(2) or Part B environmental permit
• Northern Ireland: Part A, Part B or Part C PPC permit
• Scotland: Part A or Part B PPC permit.

NetRegs only provides detailed guidance for businesses that require Part B or C permits.

Part A activities

NetRegs does not provide comprehensive guidance for businesses that operate with a permit from their environmental regulator under:

• Part A(1) and Part A(2) of environmental permitting in England and Wales
• Part A of pollution prevention and control (PPC) in Northern Ireland and Scotland
• Integrated pollution control (IPC) in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

This is a complex area of regulation. For general information about the regulation of Part A sites, see the NetRegs environmental permits and PPC permits guidance.

Environmental permits

Pollution Prevention and Control permits

Examples of food and drink activities that are regulated under Part A include:

• Slaughtering animals in slaughter houses, other than in mobile plant, with a carcass production capacity greater than 50 tonnes per day.
• Treating and processing milk, where the average quantity of milk received is greater than 200 tonnes per day.
• Treating and processing materials that are to be used to produce food products from:

- animal raw materials (other than milk) at a plant with a finished product production capacity greater than 75 tonnes per day

- vegetable raw materials at a plant with an average finished product production capacity greater than 300 tonnes per day.

Part B activities (England, Scotland and Wales) and Part C activities (Northern Ireland)

Examples of food and drink activities that are regulated under Part B in England, Scotland and Wales and PPC Part C in Northern Ireland include:

• manufacturing pet food
• animal feed compounding
• processing fish meal
• manufacturing sausage casings.

This guidance does not provide a complete list of environmental permitting (England and Wales) or PPC (Northern Ireland and Scotland) activities. If you are unsure whether you are affected by environmental permitting or PPC, contact your environmental regulator or local council.