OEP Report – Is 97% Compliance in the Waste Sector Total Rubbish? The OEP Thinks So

The Office for Environmental Protection (“OEP”) has today published a report reviewing Environment Agency (“EA”) inspections in the waste operations and installations sector in England.

Background:
Practitioners and those working in the field of environmental regulation will be aware of the far-reaching consequences of waste and potentially polluting materials not being stored, treated or disposed of safely for both the public and the environment.

Against that backdrop, the EA has reported that 97% of regulated waste operations and installations are compliant. Reassuring? Perhaps not.

In 2022, the EA received upwards of 26,000 reports of odour pollution, with 98% attributable to EA regulated sites. And, in 2025, Defra concluded in a report led by Dan Corry, that regulation was not working as well as it should, prompting the question of whether the headline figure tells the whole story.

Purpose and Scope
The OEP report is, at its core, an investigation into the basis of the EA’s reported figure of 97%. The central question is whether it is masking underperformance.

The report also examines how the legal framework for environmental inspections operates in practice: the extent to which inspections support the identification and resolution of serious non-compliance, and how risk-based regulation is planned, delivered and monitored by the EA.

In short, it is an analysis of the quality and effectiveness of inspections at permitted sites, drawing on a sample of inspectors’ reports and an analysis of compliance data across 2018 to 2022.

Core Findings
The 97% figure us unreliable
The OEP report identifies two key issues. First, 29% of sites in 2022 had not been inspected at all, but were automatically recorded as being in the highest compliance band (Band A).
Second, the EA counts Band C sites as technically compliant, even though its own guidance states that Band C sites “must improve in order to achieve permit compliance.” Taking these issues together, the OEP concludes that the EA can only be confident that around 64% of its sites are compliant.

Problems with site inspections
Even that figure, 64% may in fact not be reliable, concludes the OEP, since the EA’s own operational guidance was not being applied in practice during site inspections.
For on-site assessments of Band A sites (bearing in mind that many of those are automatically categorised as such having had no inspection at all), 28% of inspection forms showed little or no adherence to the guidance.
For remote compliance assessments, 25% did not adhere to the guidance, for example because there was no scoring of compliance breaches detected, and over half (57%) provided little assurance that inspected sites were actually performing well.
Analysis of poorly performing sites revealed further problems. Action to rectify serious non-compliance identified by the EA was followed up in only around half of subsequent inspections. There was also evidence of sites receiving improved compliance ratings without any evidence that serious non-compliance had actually been rectified, appearing in 63% of the inspection forms assessed.

Lack of quality control and quality assurance
Formal oversight systems that had previously been in place are no longer operating. As a result, instances where inspection guidance is not being followed are not being identified internally by the EA.

Inspections not being planned and delivered as intended
Inspection activity appears “disconnected from a coordinated programme,” with limited evidence of systematic planning at a national level.

Inappropriate use of remote inspections
Almost half of all inspections are now conducted remotely, yet there is no clear plan or published guidance setting out how, when and why the EA intends to use remote inspections.

Inspections per month
On average, inspectors are completing around two inspections per month. The OEP considers this may not be sufficient to deliver the system as intended. 29% of sites went uninspected in 2022 and were consequently given an automatic Band A rating. There is also a lack of transparency around funding: the OEP acknowledges the challenging fiscal context, but notes that there is no clear picture of how funding streams are allocated and used.

Lack of transparency on inspections
At the outset of the OEP’s report, the EA was not publishing inspection forms on its online public register, notwithstanding the legislative provision requiring such records to be kept and made available for public inspection.

Compliance data not easily accessible
There is a significant time lag before compliance data is published (2022 inspection data was published in 2024), which limits its potential to influence market behaviour and makes it difficult to judge the relative performance of companies. In short, the current approach does little to highlight or reward compliant businesses with strong environmental performance and fails to incentivise poorer performers to improve.

Issues not solely attributable to funding
The OEP is clear in its report that not all of the problems identified can be attributed to resource constraints. There is a lack of financial transparency making it difficult to assess whether sufficient resource is being allocated to inspections. The report pointed to the importance of the EA being able to recruit and retain skilled staff that has been cited in previous reports. Resource could also be made more efficient: for example, if more consistent inspections reduced the number of appeals, this would free up capacity, preserve resource and potentially help retain skilled staff.

Recommendations
The OEP make six key recommendations, summarised as follows:
1. EA and Defra should work together to develop and implement more key performance indicators
2. EA should review design of its compliance system
3. EA should publish its objectives and standards for planning and evaluating compliance activity
4. EA should focus its inspections on delivering environmental outcomes
5. EA to strengthen and maintain internal quality insurance and quality control
6. EA to improve transparency, timeliness and accessibility of compliance information

Conclusion
The OEP’s conclusion is unequivocal, the 97% figure is masking underperformance in the regulated waste sector. Whether that changes will depend on how committed the EA and Defra are to approaching the recommendations set out in this report.