Special Treatment Establishment Licences

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Special Treatment Establishment Licences relates to licenses sought in connection with Beauty Treatments and Sun Beds and associated practices:

  • MASSAGE
  • ACUPUNCTURE
  • COSMETIC PIERCING
  • FOOT TREATMENT
  • LIGHT TREATMENTS
  • SAUNA
  • SKIN PIERCING
  • ELECTRIC TREATMENTS
  • VAPOUR
  • MASSAGE / FACIALS
  • LASER TREATMENT
  • TATTOOING
  • MANICURE

We were recently contacted by a prospective client asking about planning application for Beauty Salon. She informed us that the application for for a Special Treatment Establishment Licence, states the requirement for planning permission.

The proposed site for the Beauty Parlor is already a retail outlet, selling electric bicycles, and as such we thought we would research the exact requirements as full planning application may not be required.

You will need to check with the Council’s Planning team to confirm whether any planning consent or permission is required. If the premises has previously operated as something other than a special treatment premises, you may require a change of use.

But does this cover premises with existing generic use classes such as Use Class E?

Typically it is not the change of use that requires a planning application it is any alteration to the shop frontage or signage. From Government Guide on Signs:

Class 13 allows advertisements to be displayed on a site that has been used continually for the preceding ten years for the display of advertisements. Class 13 does not permit any substantial increase in the extent, or alteration in the manner, of the use of the site or the display of the advertisement.

So there is some scope for making alterations, but you would need to evidence 10 years of prior use.

If you need help with a planning application then please do get in touch. 

 

 

 

Environmental Product Declaration (EPD)

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Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) Consultants

Southwest Environmental Limited can apply for an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) on your behalf. We are based in the UK, and provide our services Worldwide.

We have been successfully carrying out life cycle assessments of goods and services for over a decade. We can provide help and support in getting an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) issued for your products or services.

How does an Environmental Product Declaration Work?

An Environmental Product Declaration is a short report (often backed up by a larger report) that sets out the impacts of you product or service. For example let us pretend we are obtaining an EPD for a Hammer made by “Company A”.

We would need to find out the impacts created in the manufacturing, transport, use and disposal of the product. In Fact there are potentially 17 subdivisions to include for.

Most if the lifecycle work we undertake is based around Carbon Footprinting, but with an EPD there are special requirements that result in a broader scope:

  • GWP-fossil
  • GWP-biogenic
  • GWP- luluc
  • GWP- total
  • ODP
  • EP-freshwater
  • EP- marine
  • EP-terrestrial
  • POCP
  • ADP-minerals&metals*
  • ADP-fossil*
  • WDP*

The list extends to about 30 factors which need to be footprint, it is quite time consuming, but luckily we can find most of these values in prepared databases.

You wood find footprints for EN1508 materials or services ,and add these together to make up you final footprint and publish an EPD.

A Lot of Numbers. . .

Why Do I need an Environmental Product Declaration EPD?

You probably need one because you customer is asking for one. If they use you products as part of the service they deliver then they will need to feed in data from your EPD, in to their EPD. In that way they can work out their footprint.

If another supplier has a published EPD, they can also compare your product to the other supplier and see who has the lowest carbon.

Environmental Product Declaration EPD Costs

You can get an EPD issued for one simple products for perhaps £8000, this would include our fees and the fees to the 3rd party verifier, and the certification costs. However, costs go up very quickly for more complex products. Even a simple report will be backed up with 50 plus pages of spreadsheet calculations. Unfortunately there is no such thing as an Life Cycle Assessment that can be completed in “One Click”.

Please contact us to talk about your requirements.

Life Cycle Assessment for Amazon Product

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Life Cycle Assessment for Amazon Product

We have recently been commissioned to undertake a Life Cycle Assessment for a product being sold on Amazon Marketplace. Despite offering Life Cycle Assessment Services for over 10 years this is the first time we have produced a Life Cycle Assessment for Amazon Product.

Climate Pledge Friendly

If you have been shopping for drones or vegetables on Amazon recently you may have noticed the Climate Pledge Friendly tick box. If you select this, then only Climate Pledge Friendly items will show up in your search.

In order to back up this green claim, it is required that you submit a life cycle assessment (whole life or size reduction) and have it assessed by a third party.

How it Works

We can arrange all aspects of this process for you. We will carry out the required data collections, and or calculations to prove a size reduction, or carbon footprint for your product. We will then provide this information to a 3rd party certification body. Who will also offer you various choices in terms of  carbon offsets.

Once this has been completed we will provide information to you so it can be submitted to Amazon, and you product be included under Climate Pledge Friendly category.

We point out at this point that we are no endorsed in any way by Amazon. But we have been carrying out Life Cycle Assessments for over 10 years. Contact Us to find out more.

Phosphates in Wales

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This week, we have had our first taste of the Phosphate Planning Issues arising in Wales. This relates to the trickle down from the Dutch N Ruling (2018) which has been affecting various parts of the UK, since late 2020.

The Afon Teifi, Afon Tywi (River Towy), River Wye and Afon Cleddau are located in special areas of conservation, and as such affected by the ruling.

For this our first report in Wales relating to the Phosphate situation we have encountered some key differences, between Wales and England.

Calculators

So Far only Carmarthenshire has release a budget calculator. Compared to the the calculators we have been using in Somerset and Cornwall, it is quite limited, although it is good that it can be used offline, so we can save a copy for later use, or reference! Take note Somerset and Cornwall (probably not though).

The Carmarthenshire calculator does not automatically calculate mitigation options. This leaves sizing of wetlands for example up to the applicant / agent / consultant. And we would consider this problematic, as even with agree methods (as indicated in Somerset / Cornwall Calculators) there is enough detail to contest, without added variability.

Treatment Works

Unlike the Sewage Treatment Works (STWs) we have seen in England, many of the welsch plants have no consent limit for Phosphates. They are also for the most part way over capacity, as some of them run in overflow mode (raw sewage in rivers) for 50% of the year.

This lack of consent limit is an advantage for developers and open the possibility of pre-treating waste water from mains connected sites, to provide a benefit.

Some Similar Problems

However, some things remain the same:

In Somerset and Cornwall we have had very little feedback on sites with wetlands, or sites which use extant uses to offset new uses, or that use off-site schemes. They are all in limbo, I wouldn’t mind some critique because at least that might seam as though things were moving along. I expect this to be the same in Wales.


There have been queries on other application in Wales that seek to discredit the accuracy of treatment efficiencies. We have seen this in England and Wales. Wetlands for example for a project in cornwall have been called in to question. With regards to banking coefficients yes they will vary. But so do treatment efficiencies of manufactured solutions, and phosphate concentrations of effluent, and as such I do not think it is meaningfully practical to adjust banking coefficients.


As with all things environmental science we are trying to take a non-numerical highly variable system (a human urinating in a toilet) and apply maths to the resultant processes. It cannot be done 100% accurately. So uncertainty has to be accounted for. If a study were undertaken of say 50 systems, monitoring for inputs and outputs after 5 years we might arrive a c. 95% certainty that certain banking coefficint would be met. But in these early stages some uncertainty will have to be accepted. 


In the majority of reported cases the 99% filtration rate is achieved, and we have agreed to monitor outfall in long term, so very little remainder risk here.


In summary we need someone in NRW (or NE in England) to start making decisions on this promptly. IF not all the benefit that could occur driven by the real need for clean rivers could be written out of existence by the stroke of a pen by Llywodraeth Cymru.

Flood Risk Assessment – Newmarket

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Writing a flood risk assessment if carefully done is a largely scientific process. By “scientific” we are alluding to the fact that the content is grounded in fact, or at least as far as the available data is accurate.

If a flood of a certain depth is “forecasted” when viewing available flood data for the site then we can raise the building up. Facts and reactions to those facts. This is what we like.

One part of the Flood Risk Assessment is the Sequential Test. This “non-scientific” part of the Flood Risk Assessment we could do without. It is a policy based, almost artistic endeavor that relies on the matching of unqualified of opinions, sometimes resulting in mismatches.

Image: johndal CC BY-SA 2.0

The sequential test relies on the following ingredients in order to work:

  • search area
  • search criteria

Both of these ingredients are open to debate in terms of their size and type respectively, and as such we have to be careful to follow established guides that have been issued by some of the more proactive administrative authorities’ so that we can demonstrate plausibility.

If you would like to discuss a Flood Risk Assessment for a Project, or a Sequential Test, then please do get in touch.

Phosphate Success in Cornwall – PL31

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We have been issuing Phosphate Assessment Reports in Somerset for over a year now, and the situation for many developers is becoming quite awful with delays now of over a year in decision making. We have made enquiries with Natural England as to why.

We have had some good news however, with one of our reports recently passed off in Bodmin, Cornwall (Postcode – PL31). This site suggested use of a package treatment plant, a filter tank, and a constructed wetland land (reed bed) to treat water prior to discharge to the Camel River. The site is immediately adjacent to the Camel SAC, so was quite a high risk site, yet the result was successful.

Nationaly we now have reports passed off in Sussex, Somerset and Cornwall, and thus feel failry cofient that our method is acceptable on the whole. Please ring to talk about your site. No Obligation of course.,

You can read more about Phosphate Assessments and Nutrient Neutrality on our main Website.

Carbon Footprint Work for Shopfitters – PL21

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We have this week, complete two sets of carbon footprint calculations for a shopfitting firm in the Southwest of England.

The footprint work we have undertaken, will allow them to easily present a carbon footprint for a job, alongside their cost estimate. Some of their clients find this information important.

The method used was an input / output model. This allows us to calculate the carbon footprint of an item based on it cost. The method is perhaps the least accurate method for carbon footprinting. However, it is much much more likely to be undertaken owing to the simplicity of the method.

Tradition life cycle assessment and the subsequent carbon footprinting work can be be very time consuming, and prone to data gaps, which in turn result in incomplete studies. More time also means more money (greater cost) and as such companies with complex supply chains can be reluctant to undertake traditional LCA carbon footprinting as it coosts such a great deal.

The carbon footprinting values we have provided, slip easily in to existing reporting frameworks, and can be used to provide greater insight, in to the capital carbon involved in the various projects undertaken.

Location: 92PW+FR Ivybridge

Phosphates Mitigation Reports

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2021 was quite a busy year for Southwest Environmental Limited, we had a fairly typical work load from our long term client base, however we have seen a lot of new work from new clients relating to phosphate assessments, and nutrient neutrality.

We have undertaken reports mainly in the Southwest, however we have also undertaken some reporting for sites in the south east, in the vicinity of Stodmarsh.

Despite having a few reports passed off, and dealing with 100’s of emails with regards to extra details, from planners, natural england, and ecologists the majority of applications mired by the Phosphate Issue remain in limbo.

It would appear there is no one cable or willing to make a decision to pass off the reports.

Some of the older reports date back to November 2020, and as you might expect that is a long time to wait for news on a planning application.

A Phosphate Ion – Creative Commons License (NEUROtiker)

Our reports are now however quite thorough in terms of their content. We have iron out early wrinkles experience in early days of 2021, and had many discussions with consultees and planners, adjust and refining our reporting process each time to meet content requirements.

We have advised on on-site schemes, such as reed beds, or on-site woodland (sometimes a combination of both), and we have a method for reduce reed bed sizes using a special filtration method.

Some sites are not able to implement on-site schemes owing to perhaps lack of space or proximity to mains sewer. In these instances we have specified off-site mitigation schemes such as woodland. Off-site reed bed schemes are a very complicated proposition.

If you would like to discuss your project and any associated phosphate, nitrate or nutrient issues associated with it. Then please do contact us.

Read more about Phosphate Assessments on our website.

Soak-Away Test Report Gloucester

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Soak-Away Test Report Gloucester  

We have recently been commissioned to deliver a BRE 365 Soak-Away Test in Gloucester. The proposed development is residential. 

From commissioning to issue of report the turnaround for this project was under 5 days. 

The results were fair and we design the system in line with the planning authorities requirements, which was a 1:100 year rainfall event with a 40% allowance for climate change.  

Southwest Environmental Limited carry out soak-away testing all over the UK. If you need a report for planning, or to aid with design then please get in touch and we can provide a fixed price. 

P.s. The ground conditions on this job were sandy, with a touch of gravel. People often assume that if they see sand and gravel they will get a good result, but if there is an amount of clay in the sand and gravel mix, this can quickly reduce soakaway rates to low levels. 

Daylight and Sunligt Assessment – London – N4

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We have recently been commissioned to undertake a sunlight and daylight assessment in North London (N4).

 

The project is relatively small involving a roof extension.

 

We have been provided with plan for the proposal, as well as detailed elevations, and we will prepare a before and after comparison of sunlighting and daylighting conditions.

 

The BRE209 guide suggests that  20% reduction in lighting levels is acceptable, most projects fall within the 20% allowance.

 

If you are looking for an environmental consultant in London to undertake a Sunlight and Daylight Assessment then please call or email Southwest Environmental limited we would be very happy to assist and we can also provide design advice.