We are sorry to hear that residents have experienced problems with malodour from this site. Please be assured we are working with the operator and our partners to resolve these issues. We have created this page in response to the increase in incident reports that occurred during Summer 2022 and we aim to keep residents updated on our regulation of the site.
Sarval (Hartshill) Limited operate the animal by-product rendering plant on Mancetter Road in Hartshill. This was formerly known as De Mulder & Sons Limited. The company take animal by-products from the meat processing industry and produce processed animal proteins for pet food products and high-grade fats such as tallow to be made into biofuel. The rendering process generates odorous exhaust gases that need to be abated to prevent nuisance.
The Environment Agency (EA) regulates this site under an Environment Permit, which was issued in 2006. This permit controls emissions from the site into the environment, it includes maintenance, management, and amenity conditions.
A copy of the Environmental Permit for the site can be viewed here, however please be aware that this information is not immediately available with a licence for use. Please contact us if you want to know if, and under what conditions, we would be able to license you.
No odour complaints were received by the Environment Agency in August 2023 that may have been attributable to the operation of the plant.
An Environment Agency Officer visited the Hartshill area on Friday 18 August and carried out odour checks between 15:30 and 16:40, at this time there were no rendering odours detected.
The Company continue to carry out regular odour checks and encourage residents to call them directly about any concerns so that they can respond quickly and help identify and resolve any issues.
We are being regularly updated by the Company regarding their operations.
Forward look;
We will continue to carry out odour checks on an ad-hoc basis or following reports of any concerns. We will continue to regularly inspect the facility and will require the operator to take actions where necessary to ensure compliance with the permit.
We understand that reporting incidents is time consuming and frustrating, however the information that you provide is invaluable for us to understand the impact that the plant is having on the community and to be able to investigate and take action. Please continue to report incidents to us using our hotline number 0800 807060.
We have produced an FAQ document for the site, which you can read here, alternatively you can use th drop downs below. This document will be added to and updated if we received further queries that are not already included. Please read through this page and refer to this FAQ document in the first instance if you have any questions.
For any concerns regarding the operational life of the site, hours of operation and traffic movements to and from the site, please contact North Warwickshire Borough Council at:
https://www.northwarks.gov.uk/info/20010/public_health
The company take animal by-products from the meat processing industry and produce meat and bone meals for pet food manufactures, and high-grade tallow to be made into biofuel. The rendering process generates malodourous exhaust gases that need to be abated to prevent nuisance. The site utilises several different odour abatement processes which includes two stage acid and hypochlorite scrubbers, high temperature boilers, the regenerative thermal oxidiser, biofilters, and a granular activated carbon filter.
Certain specific activities, that could be harmful to the environment, need an environmental permit to operate. A permit gives the holder permission to carry out certain types of activities at a specific location. The permit sets conditions which will protect the environment and people’s health. If we grant a permit, we carry out periodic inspections to check compliance with the permit. We review permit conditions and can change them at any time. We may take enforcement action if we consider that the permit holder has breached one or more conditions of their permit.
We must decide whether to grant or refuse an environmental permit under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010. We will only grant a permit if the operator applying has shown that the proposed facility meets the requirements of UK and European laws in how it will be designed and run. We will not grant a permit if we believe it is likely to cause significant pollution to the environment or harm people’s health.
Calls to our incident hotline are answered by a team providing a service for customers reporting environmental incidents across the whole of England. The advisers taking the call may not be familiar with the location of the incident being raised.
We get many types of incidents reported to us and, so that our team collect all the information required to assess the risk of harm to people and the environment, they will ask all callers a set of questions tailored to the type of incident being reported.
These are usually;
Reports received via the hotline number are assessed by our incident team immediately and if this is categorised as significant or a flurry of incidents are reported, these are passed to a local duty officer within 30 minutes. We always request that reports are made via the incident line and not directly to a site officer. This ensures they are picked up when a site officer is on leave or out of the office. Incidents passed directly to an officer are also not recorded on our National Incident Recording System as they bypass the logging process.
Reports can also be passed to us by email, but please be aware that these may take slightly longer to review. This may result in us not having all the available information to assess the full scale of the incident at the actual time of the issue.
Our incident team email address is. incident_communication_service@environment-agency.gov.uk
If you use the email to notify us of an issue, please provide the answers to the above questions and your name, address and contact details.
Our call centre call handlers are not able to provide you with information about the site you are concerned about, as their role is to collect information and get it to the right people inside our organisation.
We do not routinely provide feedback on action taken on incidents on an individual basis. This is to prioritise our regulatory activities which protect the environment. This does not mean that your report has gone unheard or unaddressed. We take all reports of environmental pollution seriously and the report is combined with other reports and intelligence to determine our response. By managing our responses in this way, we can ensure that the incidents which pose the greatest risk to the environment are prioritised.
We have put this web page together to help provide feedback to the community and we are regularly meeting with your elected representatives to keep them up to date.
We encourage members of the community to report issues directly to the Company. This informs the Company that they are causing an impact and allows them to instigate an immediate investigation to stop the problem occurring.
The operator is informed about all incident reports that we receive. We do not release any personal information and therefore the operator cannot identify members of the community. The operator is expected to respond to complaints regarding odour in accordance with the Odour Management Plan for the site, and to advise us of any resulting changes to their operations.
We do not attend the site when every incident is reported to us, however we do use this information to help us focus our checks on times of the day and locations when residents have reported concerns. The frequency of these checks will be variable depending on local weather conditions and we focus on times when there is the greater potential for odour off site.
We will carry out unplanned inspections as a direct result of incident reports, alongside some planned odour checks, inspections, and audits of the site.
We assess odour at several locations around the exterior of the plant to assess if this is likely to be causing pollution to people living in and using amenities in the area.
Recent company investments and improvements include the following:
We use an assessment process designed to provide as much information as possible. The 'FIDOR' acronym - Frequency, Intensity, Duration, Offensiveness and Receptor Sensitivity - is a useful reminder of some factors that will influence the degree of odour pollution.
We record odour intensity on a scale of 0 to 6 as follows:
This is the same scale that we ask you to use to report odours to us via our hotline.
Environmental Permit conditions require an EA officer to make a judgement about whether odour beyond the site boundary is considered to be pollution and whether the operator is using all appropriate measures to limit and control odours.
Odour sensitivity describes how sensitive a person is to a particular smell. If you are highly sensitive to an odour you can detect it when it is present at lower concentrations in the air than someone who has a low sensitivity. Sensitivity to odour annoyance is slightly different because it describes how easily someone is offended by a particular smell.
How easily annoyed a person is by a smell also varies widely. A lack of annoyance may be because an individual is less sensitive to a smell, for the reasons given above, but it may also be related to where they are and what they are doing when they experience it. This is important when it comes to the difference between experiencing smells in or around your home, compared to experiencing them as part of your work. You are much more likely to be offended by a smell if it disturbs your home and leisure time than if it impacts on you in your workplace or away from home.
Odours can also remind people of past experiences, both good and bad. This is due to how smell is processed in your brain. Because of this, if you associate a smell with a bad memory, it may have the effect of upsetting you or annoying you more easily. These differences in sensitivity and annoyance are perfectly normal. It is important for all those involved in managing and reporting odour to be aware of why differences might occur and to be cautious before dismissing other people's points of view.
Sniff testing is the name given to the assessment of smells using the human nose. Some people are surprised that the human nose is used rather than monitoring equipment. There are several reasons for this. The odour condition in environmental permits require odour pollution to be “perceived by an authorised officer” which means that it is necessary for an officer to smell the odour themselves.
The human nose is still the best means we have for detecting the full range of gases that cause odour. The concentrations at which these odorous gases are present in outdoor (ambient) air is usually very low beyond site boundaries (even if the smell is intense), and few pieces of equipment are sensitive enough to pick up the full range of these gases, when compared to the nose.
In addition, sniff testing is physically versatile and allows us to assess odour at most locations without worrying about external power, weather conditions, terrain etc. Monitoring equipment is used in specific situations where additional data is needed if access is available. This is particularly useful when specific gases need to be monitored such as the odorous gas hydrogen sulphide.
Information about how we score permit breaches is set out in guidance available here:
Waste operations and installations: assessing and scoring environmental permit compliance - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
We have formal descriptions of each category within our Compliance Classification Scheme ("CCS") guidance which enables scoring to be consistent. The 4 categories that our officers use to score permit breaches are:
An operator will not be in breach of the odour condition in their environmental permit when they cause odour pollution beyond the site boundary, provided they are using all appropriate measures. However, even if the operator is using all appropriate measures but we consider the residual odour is at such a level that it is unreasonable, it will be necessary for the operator to take further measures to reduce odour pollution, or risk having to reduce or cease operations if appropriate. Where the residual odour pollution is, or is likely to be, unacceptable we will work closely with operators to require them find solutions.
Repeated substantiated odour breaches may result in escalation, particularly when no improvement plan is proposed by the operator. We have a range of regulatory powers that we can use, including taking legal action. We require any site that we regulate to be well run and managed, and not cause harm to the environment or human health. If we agree an action plan with the operator to address the problem, this does not mean we have ruled out taking enforcement action. Our focus will always be to ensure any issues are resolved as quickly as possible. Any enforcement response we take will be in accordance with our published Enforcement and Sanctions guidance which you can find on our website. See link below.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/environment-agency-enforcement-and-sanctions-policy
We have received a total of 159 odour notifications between 1 January 2022 and 31 August 2023 that were alleged to be attributable to the operations at Sarval. Incident reports remained very low between September 2022 and May 2023 and low throughout Summer 2023.
A report titled ‘Investigation into the potential health impact of odour release in Hartshill in August 2022’ has now been published by UKHSA and Warwickshire County Council. The Executive Summary is available in February’s update in the below archive.
If anyone would like to contact UKHSA regarding the report or incident, please email wmehpu@ukhsa.gov.uk quoting reference number 392152.
We want to hear from you if you have an environmental incident or concern to report, including any odour concerns.
To do this, call our free 24-hour incident hotline on 0800 80 70 60.
Please contact us at enquiries_westmids@environment-agency.gov.uk if you have any further enquiries
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