Environmental Performance Assessment Scheme
The Environmental Performance Assessment Scheme (EPAS) will provide a common standard to rate the environmental performance of those carrying out activities that we regulate and drive improvements in compliance. EPAS will not change what we regulate, but how we report on whether regulatory requirements are being met. It will replace the 2009 – 2019 Compliance Assessment Scheme (CAS), previously used to assess and report on authorisation holder compliance.
There are three environmental performance ratings: Good, Improvements required and Unacceptable. Authorisations rated as Unacceptable with no plan in place to resolve compliance issues will be published on a priority site list.
When will we start publishing EPAS ratings?
We will not start publishing EPAS ratings until we have our new digital systems in place. We anticipate this will be during 2027. We will provide six months’ notice before we start publishing environmental performance ratings and a priority site list.
We will start to apply our updated Major non-compliance criteria and environmental events categorisation from 01 January 2026.
This will give authorisation holders the opportunity to gain experience of these before we start publishing EPAS ratings.
Why do we need an environmental performance assessment scheme?
EPAS is an important part of our approach to regulation. As Scotland’s principal environmental regulator, we regulate activities that could lead to pollution or environmental harm. The relevant environmental requirements are set out in legislation.
Certain activities simply require compliance with the legislation. Some activities require specific authorisation before they can be carried out lawfully. Every activity we authorise is subject to conditions that must be adhered to by the relevant person or organisation. For activities that fall within our regulatory remit, we check compliance, and we use a range of tools to ensure that the relevant person or organisation resolves any compliance issues identified.
EPAS will support our approach to regulation by providing us with a common standard to rate environmental performance and drive improvements in compliance.
Purpose
The key purpose of EPAS is to:
- Increase overall levels of compliance
- Influence behaviour, incentivising regulated business to:
- take all necessary steps to prevent compliance issues from occurring
- remedy any compliance issues as quickly and as effectively as possible
- Provide us with information so we can target our regulatory efforts more effectively
- Allow us to demonstrate the results of our regulatory activity on a continuous basis
Benefits
There are key benefits for regulated business. The environmental performance rating will:
- more accurately reflect actions authorisation holders are taking by considering a wider range of relevant factors, including how quickly they resolve compliance issues.
- benefit those who value the importance of remaining compliant by making their environmental performance easily accessible and understandable.
Consultation
Our consultation on the proposed Environmental Performance Assessment Scheme ran from 31 March to 30 June 2025.
The EPAS consultation document and responses submitted can be viewed on the consultation hub.
Following our review of consultation responses, we published our 'we asked, you said, we did' document, setting out the feedback we received and what we changed as a result. This includes some additional explanations (Annex 2) for common questions posed during the consultation and further future guidance (Annex 3).
How we check compliance
We expect everyone to comply with their legal environmental requirements. We check compliance in various ways - through site visits and inspections, investigating events and incidents, sampling discharges and through the assessment of data that authorisation holders are required to provide us with. This enables us to take action to protect people and the environment.
When we check compliance, we assess the authorisation holder as being compliant, non-compliant or major non-compliant with the conditions in their authorisation.
Major non-compliance criteria for the activities regulated under the Environmental Authorisation (Scotland) Regulations were updated following the EPAS consultation.
View Major non-compliance criteria
Whilst we stopped using our Compliance Assessment Scheme (CAS) during the COVID-19 pandemic, our work to check compliance and tackle non-compliance has never stopped.
We have continued to communicate the outcome of this work directly to authorisation holders, advising them of their compliance category: compliant, non-compliant or major non-compliant.
Where necessary, we took enforcement action in accordance with our enforcement policy (pdf 25kB).
Our compliance verification will continue as planned. Authorisation holders can continue to discuss the outcomes of these checks with us should they disagree with the compliance verification outcome.
We will introduce an appeals process.
Our new environmental events categorisation and major non-compliance criteria will apply from 01 January 2026.
Authorisation holders must resolve any compliance issues quickly.
They should demonstrate compliance to us using appropriate evidence e.g. monitoring information, video, photographs, remote tour.
We will review the evidence provided and only re-visit the site where necessary to confirm the compliance category.
When an authorisation holder resolves compliance issues, we will record the date they are compliant as the date they submitted evidence to us demonstrating compliance (not the date when we reviewed this evidence).
No. We have been very clear since April 2023 that no attempts should be made to do so. This is because the assessment as compliant, non-compliant or major non-compliant is not an overall assessment or comparable with an historic CAS score which rated an authorisation holder for a year according to their compliance over that year.
Whether an operator is now categorised as ‘Compliant’, ‘Non-compliant’ or ‘Major non-compliant’ reflects the outcome of the compliance verification activity on that date. Where compliance issues were identified, an operator will remain categorised as ‘Non-compliant’ or ‘Major non-compliant’ until we receive evidence that the relevant issues have been resolved.
No. The rules to calculate an EPAS rating are different from the rules to calculate a CAS score so they cannot be directly compared.