Environmental Protection Act (Hansard, 14 June 1991)

§ Mr. Trippier

Implementation of part I of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 will be monitored primarily through the Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution/local authority liaison committee (IPLA), which was established in December 1989 and which will in future meet three times a year, and by means of the regular statistical returns that local authorities have been asked to make.

Section 68 of the Act will require my right hon. Friend to keep under review the discharge by waste regulation authorities of their functions under part II. That review will be undertaken by Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution which will carry out regular audits of waste regulation authorities' performance. Section 67 of the Act will also require waste regulation authorities to publish annual reports on the discharge of their functions.

To monitor the implementation of part IV, my Department is planning an annual survey, in selected parts of the country, to assess levels of street cleanliness. We also intend to set up a database of information on the implementation of part IV by local authorities, based on regular data collected by the Tidy Britain Group.

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Section 143 of the Act concerns registers of land which may be contaminated. The Government intend to require local authorities to open section 143 registers to the public in April 1993. We will ask authorities at that time to provide a summary of the information held on the registers.

The Government will be discussing with the local authority associations both the need for and the practicality of monitoring the implementation of sections 149–151 relating to control of stray dogs and enforcement of collar and tag identification.

The operation of regulations under section 152 of the Act to ban the burning of all crop residues; to permit exemptions to the ban and to control permitted burning will be monitored by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.