Southwest Environmental Limited

Regulation 61 Notice 

Have you received a Regulation 61 Notice from the Environment Agency? If yes, then you may well have a lot of work to do. If you would like us to help with he extra work load please get in touch and we will be glad to help.

Who will Regulation 61 Notice Affect?

At present the Regulation 61 Notice affects any operator in the Food and Drink Sector. You will be required to make a review of sector specific BAT (Best Available Technique).  This could be quite a simple undertaking, with very little consequence to your business  . . . or it could be a lot of work, both in terms of paper work and real world upgrades.

Shisma, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Why Have I Received a Regulation 61 Notice?

The Environment Agency is required to review permits, following publication of a revised Best Available Techniques (BAT) Reference Document, and associated BAT  Conclusions for Food Drink and Milk, which were published on 4 December 2019 in the Official Journal of the European Union.

The Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) requires EPR permits to be reviewed within four years of publication of the relevant Best Available Techniques Reference Document (BRef) BAT conclusions. The Food, Drink and Milk Industries BRef was published on 4 December 2019.

Can I Ignore a Regulation 61 Notice?

The old adage "The only two certainties in life are death and taxes" should perhaps be modified to include Regulation 61 Compliance.

"Failure to comply with this notice without reasonable excuse is an offence under Regulation 38(4)(a)  of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016, and may lead to legal action being taken against you."

What Will I have to Do?

You will have to fill out relevant sections of of the R61 Response Tool. 2 examples, from 4 or 5 dairy based BAT Criteria:

BAT for Waste

In order to reduce the quantity of waste sent for disposal, BAT is to use one or a combination of the techniques given below.

Techniques related to the use of centrifuges
(a) Optimised operation of centrifuges
Techniques related to butter production
(b) Rinsing of the cream heater with skimmed milk or water
Techniques related to ice cream production
(c) Continuous freezing of ice cream
Techniques related to cheese production
(d) Minimisation of the generation of acid whey
(e) Recovery and use of whey

BAT for Energy Efficiency

In order to increase energy efficiency, BAT is to use an appropriate combination of the techniques specified in BAT 6 and of the techniques given below.
(a) Partial milk homogenisation
(b) Energy-efficient homogeniser
(c) Use of continuous pasteurisers
(d) Regenerative heat exchange in pasteurisation
(e) Ultra-high-temperature (UHT) processing of milk without intermediate pasteurisation
(f) Multi-stage drying in powder production
(g) Precooling of ice-water

So in conclusion you can see how Regulation 61 could create a significant amount of work, for food processors and dairies that have not received any attention from the Environment Agency for a number of years. Whilst modern sites are unlikely to have had the possibility to fall behind, older sites with little proactive input could have a considerable amount of work to do.