B4.9.1 Water Discharges to Controlled Waters

Discharges in England and Wales:

Any organisation that wishes to discharge sewage or trade effluent directly into surface water will need a permit (formerly called a discharge consent) from the Environment Agency.

The charges for a permit are divided into two categories:

• Application Charges
  • These are charged at the time a new application is made.
• Subsistence Charges
  • These are annual fees (payable on April 1^steach year). They vary depending upon on:
    • Receiving water – groundwaters, coastal, surface, estuarial.
    • Volume- maximum daily volume of discharge permitted.
    • Content of discharge – bands are detailed in the charge scheme.
    • Financial factor- fixed monetary multiplier.

The 2016/2017 charges are as follows:

Reduced application charge               £125

Standard application charge              £885

Annual charge financial factor         £684

Discharges in Scotland:

Any organisation that wishes to discharge sewage or trade effluent directly into surface water may need a discharge consent from SEPA (Scottish Environmental Protection Agency). There are three categories of consents:

• Numeric consents
  • Relate to discharges for which numeric limits are specified for the flow and for concentrations of one or more constituents (also referred to as determinands). These consents are often monitored and continuously sampled.

• Non-numeric consents
  • Apply to discharges where numeric limits may be set for flow but not for the determinands. These conditions often relate to the technical requirements of the process which the effluent passes through, e.g. storm overflows.

• Descriptive consents
  • A sub-group of non-numeric consents and usually relate to smaller discharges of little or no significant environmental impact, e.g. very small sewage works. This does not devalue their importance or the need for dischargers to comply with the consent.

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