Back to Meetings, agendas, and minutes

Chief Executive's Report

Introduction

Following a busy summer period, the teams have been working to finalise the Agency’s Annual Report and Accounts. The report is a valuable insight into all our work to protect and improve Scotland’s environment and tells some of the stories of our delivery over the last financial year as well as meeting our statutory reporting duties.

Our significant work to reset the Agency has continued over the last period. Focusing on key areas of improvement, with plans in place and shared with the Agency Board to ensure strategic alignment and direction at regular intervals, to ensure we continue to effectively strengthen and improve our corporate governance framework. This work will also provide improved corporate support to our delivery functions in a variety of key areas continues including: planning, performance, risk, health and safety, digital and transformation. In a number of these areas, we have benefitted from dedicated specialist external support to facilitate improvement at pace.

This work to reset has also enabled us to identify skills gaps in governance, needed to support our current and future direction, which the team have moved to recruit over the last months, repurposing existing vacancies. This strengthening of core skills and capabilities will support our transformation journey over the next eight years.

As I have asserted previously, our people are our most important asset, and therefore significant key packages of work continue to ensure that our people are well supported with the rollout to all staff of our shared Values in sessions across the summer. Work is now underway to develop a shared set of behavioural statements for the next development phase. As part of a One SEPA refocus on Health and Safety we published a new Health and Safety Policy with associated training materials and support, invested in new Health and Safety Business Partners in our two key delivery functions of Regulation, Business and Environment to provide specialist dedicated support to managers discharging their responsibilities. We also worked with Unison colleagues to create a Domestic Abuse and Gender-based Violence Policy, which was launched in August.

As in previous CEO reports, coaching of senior leaders has continued across this year, supported by an external leadership coach. This work is raising expectation and achievement, developing a set of core management and leadership competencies for our managers, and ensuring that key communication and feedback loops are now in place across the Agency and operating effectively. Building key competencies and refreshing skillsets continues with IOSH Directing Safely training delivered across the first half of the year to senior managers.

In this period, the challenging fiscal position and the Path to Balance of the Scottish Government was shared with the Agency in late August. As an Agency we have reconfirmed our position to support the Scottish Government with an immediate review of our Capital and Revenue spend commitments for the current financial year. We have been proactive in messaging colleagues and ensuring appropriate and effective additional controls and justification is in place for essential expenditure, and that non-essential expenditure is ceased as per the request. This is balanced, as ever, with those essential delivery of services to Scotland in the protection and enhancement of the environment, and flood forecast and warning duties.

As the report outlines, given the challenges in the medium term, and the opportunity to reset the Agency, we continue to lean into opportunities for Public Sector Reform, and where possible to lead on any areas of short-term delivery, and to continue to plan for the next phases of transformation for the Agency and we look to develop a vision of delivery for Scotland over the next 10 years.

Liaison has continued with key partners and stakeholders over the last period including The Scotch Whisky Association, The Coal Authority, Scottish Water, and Environmental Standards Scotland. The Agency has been represented at the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee on 19 June to provide oral evidence with supplementary written evidence submitted 9 August on salmon farming in Scotland.

I had the privilege of bringing focus to the Agency via an Institution of Civil Engineers ‘Women in Fellowship Campaign’.

Whilst we focus on reset, significant delivery for Scotland continues throughout the Agency delivering directly every day for Scotland’s communities. None more so than our water environment. It contributes to our health and quality of life, supports a rich diversity of wildlife and is an important part of our economy. It is vital that we protect and improve the water environment and our work to do this is outlined in our Corporate Plan.

A key outcome of the Corporate Plan and Annual Operating Plan is the classification of water bodies across Scotland. Improvements in our data systems have meant that we have completed the 2023 classification for the water environment in July, much earlier than last year. Our results show that the overall condition of Scotland’s water bodies has improved annually, with further details later in the report.

I noted in my November report that salmon had been found upstream of Gateside Mills on the River Eden in Fife for the first time in over 120 years after our removal of a Weir there. I am now delighted to report that salmon have now also been found upstream of Crossmill Weir on the Levern Water in Barrhead for the first time in over 100 years, following our removal of the redundant weir in October 2023.

We have also been working in partnership with Drax and the Galloway Fisheries Trust to improve fish migration on the Galloway Hydro scheme in the Dee catchment. This work is helping to balance the benefits from renewable energy generation with protecting river ecology. Following successful trials, increased water flow will now help salmon make their vital journey upstream, without the need to alter the dam structure. This should give this iconic, endangered species, the best possible chance of thriving in the Dee catchment. ITV News Border ‘Lookaround’ programme highlighted this one-of-a-kind partnership project at the end of August and Gillian Martin, Acting Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy, said: “I welcome the collaborative approach taken by SEPA, Galloway Fisheries Trust and Drax to improve fish migration at the Galloway Hydro Scheme. This work will support the delivery of Scotland’s third River Basin Management Plan and our Wild Salmon Strategy to build resilience in our water environment and to protect and restore populations of wild Atlantic salmon in Scotland.”

All of this work supports the delivery of Scotland's third River Basin Management Plan and has been a collaborative effort across a range of teams.

Over the summer, water levels have generally remained at normal levels but following some drier weather we issued our first water scarcity alert in August. We publish weekly water scarcity reports and information for abstractors and for the first time have successfully used the Future Flood and Incident Messaging Service to send messages about water scarcity to licenced abstractors.

This report features some highlights as our teams continue to deliver for Scotland.

For the future of our environment.

Collaboration and partnership

We recognise the impact of progressive partnerships and collaborative working across the public, private and third sectors, as well as with communities. We share service delivery so that we offer better outcomes more efficiently, and with a customer focus.

Restoring the River Leven, Fife

Following successful work on the north shore of the River Leven in 2023, this project is in its final phase with ground works started that will improve 4.5km of the river.

The project, funded by SEPA’s Water Environment Fund, is the first planned by The Leven Programme partnership with a vision to restore the river for the benefit of local people and wildlife. One way to achieve this is to remove or adapt some of the man-made structures that have impacted the way the river functions.

Work is well underway to enable migrating fish such as salmon to move past two historic, impassable barriers on the Leven. Burnmill dam is being fully removed and a nature like rock ramp that makes it easier for fish to pass is being created at Kirkland dam. Work on the river will change its shape, introduce riverside planting, place large wood structures in the river and remove old stone bank protection. This will improve habitat biodiversity and encourage a more natural river channel.

The river restoration work is due to complete this year and will be part of an exciting future for the area.

Operation VERTEBRAE

Operation VERTEBRAE is the name for a multi-agency catch-all road safety campaign. The first ever Scottish participation in Operation VERTEBRAE took place at the end of June 2024 on the M74 corridor.

SEPA officers worked alongside colleagues from Police Scotland, Joint Unit for Waste Crime, Environment Agency, His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency and Immigration Enforcement to identify and inspect vehicles of interest to all agencies. SEPA’s focus was on the movement of controlled wastes, and we inspected 24 vehicles of which 12 were found to be carrying waste materials. Investigations into potential environmental offences are ongoing by SEPA.

Working with East Renfrewshire Council

SEPA’s low-cost air quality monitors have been installed at schools across the East Renfrewshire Council area. This is part of a collaborative project to raise awareness of local air quality and support safer streets, active travel, and anti-idling initiatives around the school gates. The data obtained from the monitoring provided some very interesting information which has been presented to the schools. The information has been used to support school assemblies where the importance of air quality to “the growing lung and our wider environment” was addressed. The data has also been used to encourage the work of pupil and parent committees in the promotion of active travel, introduction of walking buses, creation of parent parking pledges and establishing new “walk to school routes.” This data has been made publicly available through an on-line visualisation tool developed by SEPA and is available at East Renfrewshire Schools Project on Scotland's Environment Web.

Salmon discovered after weir removal on the River Levern, Barrhead

Salmon have been found upstream of Crossmill Weir on the Levern Water in Barrhead for the first time in over 100 years, following SEPA’s removal of the redundant weir in October 2023, using the Water Environment Fund and Open Rivers Programme funding. The project, opening up 4km to migrating fish, was the second weir on the Levern Water to be removed as part of the wider Levern Water River Restoration project.

This project was delivered through a partnership of East Renfrewshire Council, SEPA, Green Action Trust and the Clyde River Foundation supported by the Water Environment Fund. The wider Levern project delivers benefits for the water environment, biodiversity, climate resilience and better access to blue green infrastructure in Barrhead.

Working with North Lanarkshire Council

SEPA worked with North Lanarkshire Council and St Brendan’s and Muirhouse Primary Schools, in the Motherwell area, to assist in a clear air campaign run by pupils ahead of Clean Air Day 2024. The school-led campaign involved pupils organising and taking part in a morning protest to highlight the issue of traffic around the schools, learning about the data provided by the air quality monitoring, holding joint assemblies to discuss air pollution, and using their artistic talents to design posters and banners highlighting to parents and carers the effect traffic close to the school can have on local air pollution. In the week of Clean Air Day, SEPA, along with North Lanarkshire Council, returned to St Brendan’s Primary School to present and share with pupils the results and findings of the air quality monitoring data. The project outputs have also been made publicly available through an on-line visualisation tool developed by SEPA and is available at: North Lanarkshire – Clean Air Schools Project on Scotland's Environment Web.

Our amazing air learning lab - Glasgow Science Centre

On the UK’s 8th annual Clean Air Day, SEPA supported a day of learning at the Glasgow Science Centre where young people were encouraged to lead change, tackle air pollution, and protect the future of our environment through science. Pupils were invited to the special event to celebrate the schools that have taken part in the "Our Amazing Air" learning lab programme run by the Glasgow Science Centre in partnership with SEPA.

Our Amazing Air is a Science Technology Engineering and Maths learning initiative developed in partnership with SEPA and the Glasgow Science Centre, through funding from Scottish Government. The in-class programme is aimed at primary five and primary seven pupils and teaches young people about the importance of clean air, how the air environment functions, and the effects of air pollution on our health and the environment. The programme includes training sessions and free lesson plans for teachers so they can support learners explore the air around us and investigate how it supports life through hands-on activities, group discussions and experiments and is intended to culminate around or on Clean Air Day. A total of 1200 pupils from 50 classes took part during the 2024 term.

Eighth national report to the International Atomic Energy Agency on implementation of the Joint Convention

The UK is committed to the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management. The Joint Convention is a legal instrument of the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency, which establishes international requirements for the safe management of radioactive substances and waste, not just in nuclear energy generation but also in non-nuclear sectors such as education, health care and research.

All signatories (80+ nations) must submit a national report every three years to the International Atomic Energy Agency on how they are implementing the Joint Convention. SEPA is an active contributor to the UK report on compliance with the legally binding international obligations. Our experts have been directly involved in the international peer review of the reports submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency by each nation, to identify areas of good practice and performance, and any gaps.

Joint working with Scottish Government Rural Payments and Inspections Division results in penalty for farm that polluted local watercourse

SEPA officers identified pollution of a watercourse from a farm. The breach and impact were reported to the Scottish Government Rural Payments and Inspections Division as a cross-compliance breach resulting in a 5% farm payment penalty (£2000) being applied.

Public Sector Reform

As a public service, we continue to respond effectively to the increasing pace of change, and we are committed to considering the best models for delivery of all our services. SEPA continues to lead and engage with a range of initiatives to further the objectives of public sector reform (PSR).

Environment and Economy Leaders Group (EELG) – Public Sector Reform Governance Group

The Chief Executive represents SEPA at the Governance Group and the EELG PSR Group. One of the projects this group is leading on is the development of an Aquaculture Consenting Process to act as an exemplar of good practice and demonstrate an early win across EELG partners.

SEPA is leading and engaged in public sector reform groups across the following key areas:

Estates

We continue to build strong operational and strategic relationships leading a focus on the sector estate. We are actively helping to build momentum on workspace rationalisation and efficiency and acting as a lead organisation in key workstreams including office booking systems.

Data

SEPA lead on landscape review of geo-spatial data under Public Sector Review across the Environment & Forestry Directorate. The aim of this review was to build upon existing collaboration by enhancing data sharing opportunities with the aims of:

• improving policy and outcomes,
• cost effectiveness from collaboration, and
• providing the residents of Scotland with co-ordinated and user-friendly information.

These next steps of this work are pending a decision on budget allocation from Scottish Government.

Procurement

As lead Agency for the Procurement workstream, our Head of Procurement has led a review across EELG bodies of the opportunities for alignment, rationalisation and collaboration of procurement activities.

As of 24 August 2024, the group has completed analysis of around £300m of potential future (pipeline) activity. Although no immediate procurement opportunities have been identified the group proposed to continue identifying opportunities for collaboration through the following actions:

• Quarterly review of procurement pipelines to identify collaboration opportunities.
• Link with other environment review sub-groups, such as Digital and HR & People, to identify opportunities where collaborative procurement could act as enabler to achieve efficiencies and streamlining in other functions.
• Agree on best way to share knowledge and expertise, such as continued procurement sub-group activity, procurement templates without shared service cost burden, lessons learnt, knowledge of technical colleagues to help with scoping and evaluation.
• Any identified opportunities for establishing collaborative frameworks will be discussed and reviewed by the Scottish Public Procurement Group as part of Scottish Government Procurement Strategy initiatives 2024-2028.

Futures group

Our Head of Water and Planning represents SEPA on the Environment Futures Group workstream. This group has been considering how partners can better work together to deliver Scotland’s Environment Strategy. This work is now focussing how on how to mainstream collaboration around land use and circular economy objectives using a place-based approach. A workshop on 10 September 2024 considered the selection of a small number of proposed pilot places.

Transformation

To deliver effectively for Scotland, we need to transform areas of our organisation and embed a customer and delivery focus in everything we do. Doing so will mean we can design and offer better, more resilient services that meet the needs of our customers.

Organisational transformation

Across the organisation, a significant reset of altitude and expectation within our senior leader population continues.

A restructure within the Governance, Performance and Engagement portfolio is underway, and will ensure SEPA has a strategic hub to effectively support all our business. This includes changes to strengthen our corporate governance framework, refresh our communications strategy; performance monitoring and reporting; risk; and how we can enhance the customer experience.

We are currently undertaking a review of our flooding service within our Data, Evidence and Innovation portfolio. A review of the Regulation, Business and Environment portfolio is planned for autumn and a cross review with Data, Evidence and Innovation will be considered shortly after. Colleagues continue to be supported during these changes by the people team, alongside the Corporate Leadership Team and Trade Union.

SEPA is ensuring transformation spend meets “business critical and essential criteria” as the organisation prepares for wider transformation as part of public sector reform.

People Strategy

Our work to deliver on the People Strategy continues to build momentum and pace. Our values have been embedded throughout the organisation, with work to launch a behavioural framework following in the autumn. This will help to provide a platform for further transformative work under each of our priority areas; Employee Support Network, Personal & Organisational Development, Engaging and Empowering Teams and How We Work. Immediate changes and outputs in service from our people teams include a new approach to talent acquisition following successful recruitment, the development of a career family framework to support career development and transparency, improved Management Information to support our teams and a shift to a business partner approach. Our People Strategy is set out in a separate report for this meeting.

New online digital service for new Private Sewage Treatment Systems (PSTS)

Since 2020, SEPA has offered a digital application service which allows people who own private sewage treatment systems which have been in place for more than two years to register them online. On 16 July we launched a new service which allows people with private sewage treatment systems less than two years old to register them online. This service is an innovative and exciting step forward in the way that SEPA processes applications. It integrates computerised mapping software known as a Geographic Information System, to automatically carry out environmental screening for each application then assigns the correct set of conditions to the authorisation to ensure any potential environmental harm is mitigated. Applicants can now expect to receive their authorisations in around half an hour, compared to the previous maximum wait of 28 days. SEPA will continue to offer traditional application forms as an option.

Implementation of the Integrated Authorisation Framework

Earlier this year, we sought views on the type of authorisation that we propose to use for the authorisation of waste management, water, and industrial activities under the new framework. Overall, the response was positive, with 83.7% of respondents agreeing to our proposed approach on the type, tier and wording of the activities and authorisation that would be required. Taking on board stakeholder comments and feedback, we have made some changes and have published the outcome of the consultation in our consultation digest, which summarises the responses we received and what we have done in response. The digest showcases our revised format focusing on the most significant issues raised and the most significant changes made as a result.

Our engagement on the implementation of the Integrated Authorisation Framework continues with two further consultations seeking views on both proposed changes to application and subsistence charges and on the introduction of standard conditions for activities regulated using a registration level authorisation. Both consultations will take us a step closer to implementing a standardised, simpler, common framework for environmental authorisations in Scotland.

Focused on delivery

SEPA is Scotland’s principal environmental regulator, and our purpose is to protect and improve Scotland’s environment. Our approach to deliver for Scotland focuses on what we do and our corporate plan priorities. We also continue to develop our approaches to communicate and engage effectively with all our customers, the public and communities.

Protect

Monitoring work commenced to support implementation of our sea lice regulatory framework

This Summer, we commenced a pilot programme of targeted monitoring of wild salmon populations in rivers on the West Coast to support implementation of our new Sea Lice Regulatory Framework.

An important part of the work we need to do to implement the regulatory framework is to assess whether sea lice from existing fish farms are contributing to impacts on wild salmon. This assessment will require consideration of a range of different types of evidence. Information on the condition of juvenile salmon populations is one of the types of evidence we will be looking at.

The sea lice regulatory framework came into effect on 1 February. We have moved quickly to implement monitoring to support the framework. The juvenile salmon pilot monitoring programme was designed in collaboration with scientists in Scottish Government’s Marine Directorate. It has involved a team of our fish biologists monitoring for juvenile salmon in rivers draining into coastal waters that, according to our models, experience different concentrations of sea lice. We will be discussing the learning from the pilot with representatives of fishery managers and farmed fish producers later in the year as part of the development of a longer-term collaborative monitoring strategy.

Unlicensed waste site cleared – digital interventions

As part of the Scottish Government funded digital interventions work we are continuing with the identification of unlicensed waste carriers advertising on Facebook. An investigation initiated in February 2024 into a Facebook post has resulted in the identification and clearance of an unlicensed waste site in the Edinburgh, Lothians and Borders area.

The operator was unaware of their legal obligations but has been fully cooperative with SEPA, has obtained appropriate registration to allow the transport of controlled waste as part of their business, and has ensured appropriate disposal of accumulated waste at licenced sites. The digital interventions work looks to detect and disrupt lower risk activities at an early stage, to prevent it from escalating to more polluting, criminal and resource intensive responses.

Information Notice Served on Drilling Rig Operators

Drilling rigs for oil and gas exploitation often have radioactive sealed sources installed in onboard gauges. The Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 requires every radioactive source in Scotland to be recorded and under regulatory control. During 2022 and 2023 permit applications were received from companies for sealed sources installed in drilling rigs. An investigation was carried out and it was found these sources had been installed for a period of time without the proper authorisation. This led us to believe that there may be other companies in the same position. Information notices were served to all known drilling rig operators to obtain further information. As a result of the responses to the notices several more instances of unauthorised sources have been identified and we are now working to address this and take enforcement action where appropriate.

Wastewater testing for COVID transferred to National Health Service Lothian

The national programme of wastewater testing for fragments of genetic material Ribonucleic acid (RNA) from the covid virus (SARS-CoV-2) was successfully transferred to National Health Service Lothian at the end of July.

We started testing wastewater for covid-19 RNA in May 2020. We then quickly established the first national surveillance programme in the UK. The programme is funded by Scottish Government and currently tests wastewater from up to around 80% of Scotland’s population each week.

Samples for testing are collected by Scottish Water from wastewater entering wastewater treatment works across the country. During the pandemic, samples were also collected from various access points in sewer networks to help identify local hotspots of infection.

Work to transfer the testing programme to National Health Service Lothian began in April. We worked closely with Public Health Scotland, National Health Service Lothian, Scottish Government and Scottish Water to help ensure the transfer was seamless. This included carrying out an inter-laboratory exercise to check comparability of our testing results and those of National Health Service Lothian.

Transfer of laboratory testing of wastewater samples was completed on time at the end of July. We are continuing to liaise with Public Health Scotland as it develops a new results dashboard. Until this is in place, we will continue to support the programme by reporting the testing results produced by National Health Service Lothian through our dedicated covid wastewater spotfire tool.

We are proud of how we were able to quickly set up a wastewater testing programme early in the pandemic and subsequently deliver high quality data for Scottish Government on covid-19 RNA prevalence across the country every week. This has been down to the dedication and innovation of the team of scientists carrying out the analyses in our laboratory at Eurocentral and our data scientists, who processed and reported the results.

We are now making use of the experience and skills we have gained from analysing viral genetic material to develop and implement programmes of DNA-based environmental monitoring to support our work to protect and improve Scotland’s environment.

UK security requirements for radioactive sources

The UK has a well-established regulatory framework for maintaining the security of sealed radioactive sources used in medical and industrial sectors which could cause severe disruption or harm if they were acquired by criminals or terrorists. Having consulted with our stakeholders we are now developing a revised approach to regulation and enforcement. 

International standards for monitoring and assessing radioactive contamination in the environment

In June, following review by member states, SEPA as part of a small expert group, made the final technical edits to guidance that will be published by the International Atomic Energy Agency at the end of 2024. Involvement with this work places SEPA at the forefront of influencing and shaping international guidance.

SEPA Interim Public Register

SEPA’s interim online public register is now available externally via SEPA’s website. There is lots of public register information available.

Our key Public Register data can be used to search for information about authorisations under:

• Industrial activities - Pollution Prevention and Control
• Waste regimes
• Water - Controlled Activities Regulations
• Controlled reservoirs

Waste activities, water and industrial activities

A range of authorisation documentation is being published in a phased manner on the Find an authorisation document webpage. This includes authorisation documentation for pollution prevention and control; Licences under the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011; Other permits under the Pollution Prevention & Control (Scotland) Regulations 2012 ("Pollution Prevention and Control " Part B); and Licences under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (Part II) and Waste Management Licencing (Scotland) Regulations 2011.

We also have an ongoing project to create a new on-line digital Public Register service which will make most of our regulatory documents and data publicly available. This ambitious five-year project is part of our digital transformation.

Bathing water signage

We are currently exploring moving away from bathing water signage on beaches to the use of Quick Response (QR) codes on beaches which link to phone applications. This could substantially increase our flexibility and coverage was well as reducing capital costs and CO2 emissions. We expect to make a final decision by the end of the year.

Improve

Water classification results

In July we completed the 2023 classification of the water environment. This is three months earlier than the previous year and reflects the improvements in the systems for managing data. Our monitoring network has progressively recovered since the pandemic/cyberattack and we expect this recovery to be complete by 2025.

Since the start of water environment classification for River Basin Management Planning in 2008, the overall condition of Scotland’s water bodies has improved each year. The percentage of surface water bodies that were classed as good or better in 2008 was 61% and is now 65.6%, demonstrating an improvement of 4.6% since 2008 (Figure 4). The number of surface water bodies classed as bad overall condition has decreased from 224 in 2008 to 57 in 2023, an improvement of 74.6% of these water bodies that indicates an upward trend in overall condition.

Reporting on the performance of Glasgow’s Low Emission Zone

Under Scottish Government's Cleaner Air for Scotland 2 Strategy, SEPA are responsible for reporting on the air quality performance of Scotland Low Emission Zones. The second Phase of Glasgow's Low Emission Zone came into force on 1 June 2023, with the first Low Emission Zone performance report published this summer. Over the last few months SEPA has been collaborating with the local authority and public bus operators to collect detailed traffic data and are developing and updating the air quality models to ensure accurate reporting on Low Emission Zone performance.

For Aberdeen, Dundee, and Edinburgh, SEPA are developing the base-line modes to ensure accurate reporting in 2025 once those Low Emission Zones have been operating for 12 months. We will share the outcome of Glasgow’s Low Emission Zone performance when our report is ready and provide updates for Aberdeen, Dundee, and Edinburgh at key points in the reporting cycle.

Lyne Burn restoration project, Fife

In our June report, we reported that the Lyne Burn project, funded by SEPA through the Water Environment Fund, had been nominated for an award in the category Public Realm at the Scottish Design Awards. We are pleased to let you know that this project achieved a silver Scottish design award in the category Public Realm.

The design award recognised the success of the partnerships involved and the key improvements in the design including social space, connectivity, tree planting and habitat.

Adapt

Water scarcity engagement

As part of our work on climate resilience and protecting the water environment, SEPA has been publishing weekly water scarcity reports and information for abstractors since May. Water levels in rivers and lochs have generally remained at normal levels this summer, but following some drier weather we issued our first water scarcity alerts of 2024, for the Firth of Forth and Firth of Tay areas, on 1 August 2024.

We continue to monitor and prepare for water scarcity and are working with other organisations to raise awareness of potential impacts on key sectors, and steps they can take to deal with low water levels.

This year we have successfully started to use the Future Flood and Incident Messaging Service to send messages about water scarcity to licenced abstractors. Over 850 customers received an email introducing the new method of delivering water scarcity communications, which is now capable of sending email and short message service (SMS) messages to keep water users updated on developing water scarcity events. This will align our water scarcity and flooding communication systems and will help us to communicate information about water scarcity levels in a more efficient way using text messages and emails.

Hydrometry Cableways

Following a full review of our hydrometry cableways we have identified 28 for permanent closure. These cableways will be replaced with new technologies which are expected to deliver the same or better service, whilst removing the need for infrastructure. Removing the infrastructure reduces health and safety risk, cost, and embodied carbon emissions. The review of our cableways was extended to include full condition and suitability surveys for all hydrometric sites across Scotland. This snapshot of the state of our network is essential to enable effective planning of future modernisation and investment. The surveys were completed to plan in July.

Telemetry improvements

Telemetry improvements have been another key focus of our teams over the summer. Phases one and two of the data logger improvement project have now been completed, with over 220 stations benefiting from more reliable data feeds. Reducing technology failures at our sites through modernisation also dramatically improves the efficiency of the team by reducing the need for reactive site visits.

Avoid

Consultation on new Materials Facility charging scheme

In June 2024, the Scottish Government issued a new statutory Code of Practice for Material Facilities (recyclate bulking and sorting facilities) that will require SEPA to change the way it regulates this area. The new Code brings more facilities into scope and sets out more extensive sampling and reporting requirements for operators, that will align with the introduction of a packaging extended producer responsibility system in 2025. We are producing additional guidance to help operators comply, and as part of the implementation, we have reviewed and are consulted on a revised charging scheme, based on our updated regulatory approach. The consultation closed on 11 September.

Warn

Enhance our flooding approach, systems and products based on community and partner research and feedback

In August we will switch on Phase One of the improvements to our Floodline service. The digital enhancements include the launch of a new Floodline customer account management webpage, MyFloodline.sepa.scot, which is AA Standard for accessibility.

Phase One will also see the release of a new technological capability which will help us share our flood warnings with other platform providers and news channels. We are also laying the foundations for the next phase of automation, addressing some of our frequently issued warnings.

This major IT-enabled project has embraced our One SEPA approach by collaborating across various disciplines and teams and delivering a user-centred service following Digital Scotland Service standards.

Spotlight on...early careers

Early careers programmes launched across Regulation and Flooding

As part of SEPA’s workforce planning and to address a critical shortage of skills in two key areas, our Flooding and Regulation functions have developed targeted early careers training schemes, and the adverts for these went live at the end of July. These schemes are to grow our own talent and create a resilient and flexible workforce that can address the environmental challenges we face now and into the future.

The Trainee Environment Protection Officer and the Trainee Flooding Officer schemes are both offering structured training programmes over two years that will include a mixture of on-the-job learning, coaching, and mentoring from staff across the organisation, e-learning and structured classroom-based learning, including delivery by external providers. This will provide our trainees with the skills and experience to be fully competent Regulatory and Flooding Officers after two years. Throughout the training programme, trainees will be combining their learning with hands on work, resulting in an immediate contribution to environmental protection and flood risk management.

These schemes have been developed within the context of our wider corporate workforce planning. In parallel, our employee value proposition has been developed, our values promoted within advertisements and relationships with academic providers built. Internally, we have a structured performance framework including learning plans which means colleagues have clear training and development goals and an identified career pathway.

This collaboration of multiple teams’ efforts within the workforce planning space will help us create a world class agency, ready for the significant challenges ahead in protecting and improving the environment and ensuring Scotland is resilient to flooding and climate change.

The success of these pilots will be closely monitored with a view to repeating next year and building a blueprint for other functions who may also benefit from an early careers programme.

This report represents an overview of SEPA’s delivery activity across the period.

Nicole Paterson
Chief Executive Officer, September 2024.