CON_24089 Exemption proposals for the Environmental Permitting Regulations

Introduction

The UK and Welsh Governments jointly published a consultation in April 2025 on reforming the Environmental Permitting (England & Wales) regulations 2016 to empower regulators to create, amend and remove types of exempt facilities and activities that are not required to hold an environmental permit. In their formal response, Defra confirmed their intention to initially grant these new powers to the Environment Agency and to take the necessary steps to amend the Regulations in 2026, as they apply to England. UK Government's aim is to simplify and speed up the process for amending exemptions, with the intention of making the permitting framework more responsive to changing environmental risk profiles and enabling regulators to take risk-based decisions while maintaining proportionate levels of oversight. 

The UK Government has laid secondary legislation to make these changes for waste operations, waste controlling and transporting activities, water discharges, and groundwater activities. It also intends to introduce further primary legislation at the next suitable opportunity to allow it to implement similar reforms for flood risk activities. 

This is our first consultation ahead of gaining the new powers to make, revise and revoke exemptions from the need to hold an environmental permit. We are seeking views on 7 proposed exemptions. These are designed to support construction activities in England and the UK Government's commitment to streamline environmental permitting for low-risk activities. The proposals are supported by risk assessments which consider how the risks to the environment and human health can be managed to an acceptable level by operators.

The exemptions we are consulting on include flood risk activities exemptions. We will enact these as soon as possible if we are given the powers to do so in future. If these exemptions are supported, it is our intention to deliver the benefits of these measures as quickly as possible by publishing time-limited regulatory position statements for the proposed flood risk activities, until such a time as we can implement exemptions.

The Environment Agency will take consultation responses into account in reaching a decision whether to introduce any or all these proposals and the conditions that will apply. We will publish our consultation response on the GOV.UK website. New exemptions, risk assessments, and regulatory position statements will also be published on GOV.UK.