Scotland is overhauling legislation covering the Scottish Environment Protection Agency’s (SEPA) environmental authorisations for water, waste and pollution prevention and control.
On 1st November 2025 dozens of pieces of legislation will be revoked with requirements consolidated under The Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 through changes introduced by The Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025.
The change should not have a significant impact to most organisations, as the requirement to have authorisation from SEPA when undertaking certain activities still remains, but the requirements for such authorisations will now come from the 2018 Regulations. The overhaul of legislation will require significant changes to entries in LUS, with entries covering revoked legislation being archived and replaced by new entries.
We have also added the profile codes for ‘Non-permitted operations’ and ‘Permitted operations’ to the entry so that it is added to registers for organisations where Scottish legislation is relevant (previously it was only added to registers where radioactive substances activities were relevant). We have added an update to the 2018 Regulations to summarise the changes and over the coming months will be making further updates, including adding individual entries to cover the activities which require environmental authorisation. Organisations whose registers cover relevant legislation will get updates automatically as we make the changes to add new entries and archive entries.
The following activities will be regulated under the 2018 Regulations from 1st November 2025.
- Radioactive substances activities
- Water activities
- Waste management activities
- Hazardous waste mixing and waste oil mixing, and treatment of waste oil
- Landfill activities
- Management of separately collected waste and operating a materials facility
- Management of waste vehicles
- Management of waste electrical and electronic equipment
- Management of waste batteries
- Recovery of waste by application to land for the purpose of soil improvement
- Industrial emissions activities
- Emissions activities
- Operating a large combustion plant
- Incineration and co-incineration of waste at a waste incineration plant or waste co-incineration plant
- Organic solvent emissions activities
- Titanium oxide activities
- Energy efficiency requirements for specified activities
- Other emissions activities
- Operating a medium combustion plant
- Petrol vapour recovery activities
Background
In 2018, The Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 (EASR) were introduced with the aim of providing a standardised, simplified, common framework for environmental authorisations in Scotland, initially only covering the regulation of radioactive substances activities.
The Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2025 updates the 2018 Regulations to bring the 4 main environmental regimes regulated by SEPA under a single ‘Integrated Authorisation Framework’ from 1st November 2025.
The 4 regimes are:
- water
- waste
- radioactive substances; and
- pollution prevention and control.
Activities covered are also expanded to those involving sewage sludge to land, carbon capture, non-waste anaerobic digestion and certain electricity generators.
Legislation that will be revoked in full, from 1st November 2025, with entries being archived on LUS, includes:
- The Controlled Waste (Registration of Carriers and Seizure of Vehicles) Regulations 1991
- The Environmental Protection (Applications, Appeals and Registers) Regulations 1991
- The Sludge (Use in Agriculture) Regulations 1989
- The Control of Pollution (Licensing of Waste Disposal) (Scotland) Regulations 1977
- The End-of-Life Vehicles (Storage and Treatment) (Scotland) Regulations 2003
- The Landfill (Scotland) Regulations 2003
- The Pollution Prevention and Control (Scotland) Regulations 2012
- The Waste Management Licensing (Scotland) Regulations 2011
- The Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011
- The Waste Management Licences (Consultation and Compensation) Regulations 1999
- The Waste Management Licensing (Scotland) Regulations 1996
- The Waste Management Regulations 1996
