OEP Complaints Guidance for Public Authorities

Public authorities

Individuals can complain to us if they think that a public authority has broken environmental law.

For our purposes, a public authority is any person or organisation conducting activities of a public nature, including:

• government departments and ministers
• agencies of government
• local authorities (county councils, district councils, unitary authorities, and parish councils)
• some private bodies such as water companies – but only in respect of their public powers and duties
• harbour authorities

A public authority could fail to comply with environmental law by:

• unlawfully failing to take proper account of environmental law when conducting its activities, for example not carrying out an environmental impact assessment
• unlawfully exercising, or failing to exercise, any activities it has to conduct under environmental law, for example not properly regulating environmentally harmful activities it is responsible for licensing

Our Process

Complaint Received

• Complainants must complain to you first and must have fully exhausted the relevant complaints process if there is one.
• The complaint must come to the OEP within a year of the alleged failure to comply with environmental law, or where the complaints process is finished more than 9 months after the alleged failure, within 3 months of your final response.
• Where a complainant contacts us without first having exhausted your complaint process, we will signpost them to you.

Validation

• We will check that the complaint meets the criteria for complaining to the OEP.
• As part of this we will clarify with the complainant whether the complaint has been through your complaints process.
• Where a complainant contacts us without first having exhausted your relevant complaint process, we will signpost them back to you.
• If your complaints process has concluded, we will move to assessment.

Assessment

• We will review the evidence to see which environmental law may not have been complied with.
• We will contact you to establish whether your complaints procedure has been exhausted.
• In some cases, we will ask for your comments on the complaint and any relevant evidence you wish to supply.
• Decide as to whether to close a complaint or investigate further.

Investigation

• Where we decide to investigate our purpose will be to assess whether the public authority has failed to comply with environmental law.
• Through our investigation we will gather and analyse evidence. This can take various forms, including serving an information notice. You must respond in writing and provide the information requested so far as it is reasonably practicable to do so.
• In instances where we are satisfied that there is a failure to comply with environmental law, and where we consider that the failure is serious, we will issue a decision notice. You must respond in writing to decision notices, including to confirm whether you will take the steps we require.
• At the end of every investigation, unless we take a case to court, we will produce an investigation report. This will contain our conclusion and recommendations. Where we take a case to court the court judgment will replace the need for an investigation report.

Court proceedings

• If you do not agree with the recommendations in the decision notice, there is a refusal to comply with them or you contest our final outcome we may commence an environmental review of the case (review application in Northern Ireland).
• We can also apply for judicial review or a statutory review in appropriate cases, without having issued an information notice or decision notice. We will only do this where we consider there is or may be a failure to comply with environmental law which is serious and urgent.