Consultation on modernising environmental permitting for industry

BAT has, historically, been developed on a sector-specific basis given the differences in techniques and processes between sectors. However, there is another established mechanism stemming from the EU system for setting standards called ‘horizontal’ BAT. Horizontal BAT reference documents cover cross-cutting issues and apply across all of industry where relevant, for example existing horizontal BAT reference documents include energy efficiency and emissions monitoring, although they only have the weight of guidance. 

We are considering the right balance between vertical and horizontal BAT moving forwards and would like to engage with the devolved governments on potential improvements. Some stakeholders have argued that greater use could be made of horizontal BAT to set out cross-sector environmental impacts and requirements. This would allow vertical BAT to be more streamlined and focus solely on sector-specific matters. 

Greater use could be made of horizontal BAT in:  

• setting detailed mandatory technical standards for processes or technologies that are used in similar ways across all or many industries (for example, steam generation, industrial cooling, certain abatement technologies and management of low-volume high-concern pollutants such as PFAS) 

• setting more generic or narrative requirements that apply across sectors (for example, on the use of environmental management systems, emissions monitoring, safe site management, energy efficiency or resource efficiency) 

The benefit would be that sectoral BAT could become more streamlined and specific, and horizontal BAT could be used to change generic requirements or requirements relating to widely--used technologies more rapidly and coherently for all sectors. It would also make the system more adaptable given the slow-moving nature of the BAT system, where some sectors (for example, ceramics manufacturing) have previously had almost two decades between reviews. 

A risk of this approach could be to weaken the certainty that business has that all standards for a sector remain stable until that sector-specific BAT is reviewed which usually provides at least a decade of regulatory stability and so underpins confidence in investment. 

It should be noted that the BAT system has high compliance because of the predictable requirements for industry – enforcing new rules for all existing industrial installations at once would be impracticable and could undermine confidence in regulatory stability. Therefore, the technical requirements of any relevant horizontal BAT would only be written into an installation’s permit when a new permit is issued or when an existing permit is substantially revised or reviewed – for example, when its sector-specific BAT has been updated. Where horizontal BAT is more generic or simply requires a plan of some kind, it could instead be covered as an operational matter through requirements relating to environmental management systems, rather than through a permit revision. 

We would like to gather early ideas through this consultation and will work with the devolved governments to agree an approach in the future through the UK BAT system.