Standard Rules Consultation No 32 - Proposed Standard Rules Permits for Small Sewage Discharges

Overview

The Environment Agency is responsible for regulating ‘water discharge activities’ and ‘groundwater activities’ as defined in Schedule 21 and Schedule 22 to the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2016 (the EPR)  respectively. Water discharge activities are activities that include discharging liquid effluent or wastewater into surface waters like rivers, streams or coastal waters. Groundwater activities are activities that take place on, or below, the ground surface with the potential to impact upon the quality of groundwater.

Water discharge activities and groundwater activities require an environmental permit issued by the Environment Agency unless an exemption from permitting applies. The Environment Agency can choose to regulate water discharge activities using a ‘bespoke’ or ‘standard rules’ permit and, in October 2023 the EPR was amended so that standard rules permits could also be used for groundwater activities.

This consultation is to seek your views on the proposed new standard rules for the following activities, all of which are currently regulated using bespoke permits:

• Discharges of treated sewage effluent to ground of more than 2m³/d but not more than 5m³/d.
• Discharges of treated sewage effluent to ground of no greater than 1.5m³/d which are discharged using a shallow drainage system that does not conform to the British Standard, and which are replacing an existing discharge to surface water or to ground.
• Discharges of treated sewage effluent to surface water which achieve secondary treatment using equipment that does not conform to the British Standard and/or where the receiving watercourse does not always have flow.

We will also seek your views on the generic risk assessments associated with each standard rules set.

You can find the consultation document, proposed standard rules permits and associated generic risk assessments in the related section at the bottom of this page.

Responding to this Consultation

This consultation is to help you understand our proposals and provide you with sufficient information to enable you to comment on them. We will consider your answers and comments to revise our proposal and finalise the standard rules.

The consultation will run for a period of 6 weeks from 1^st October 2025 and will close at 11.59pm on 12^th November 2025. We will publish our response, together with the new standard rules and risk assessment, on GOV.UK.

Please submit your response using this online consultation tool, as it provides an easy and efficient way to respond. It will also help us to: 

• gather all responses in one place 
• summarise responses quickly and accurately 
• reduce the costs of the consultations

If you prefer, you can submit your response by email by using the response form, which you will find under the related section of this consultation, located at the bottom of this page. Please email your response form to: enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk and enter ‘Standard Rules Consultation 32’ as the subject. Alternatively send by post to: Environment Agency, National Customer Contact Centre, PO Box 544, Rotherham, S60 1BY.

If you have any queries on this consultation please contact enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk and enter ‘Standard Rules Consultation 32’ as the subject.

Please follow the 'Online Consultation' link below to start your response.