Environmental guidance for your business in Northern Ireland & Scotland

Does your healthcare business require a PPC permit?

Your business may require a pollution prevention and control (PPC) permit from your environmental regulator or local council. For example, you will need a permit if your business has a production capacity above a certain level or if you use certain hazardous substances.

If your business is an installation or mobile plant you will need a pollution prevention and control (PPC) permit from your environmental regulator.

An installation is a stationary technical unit, such as a self-contained building, permanent structure or fixed plant, used for listed activities.

A mobile plant is plant that can be moved and is used for listed activities.

Listed activities

These are industrial, waste or intensive farming activities that have an impact on the environment and are listed in the PPC regulations. They are split into categories:

Part A, B and C in Northern Ireland
Part A and B in Scotland

Listed activities that might be carried out by healthcare businesses include:

	Permit Categories
Listed activity	Northern Ireland	Scotland
generating energy using boilers with a rated thermal input of 50MW or more	Part A	Part A
disposing of hazardous/special waste in a facility with a capacity of more than 10 tonnes a day	Part A	Part A
disposing of non-hazardous waste in a facility with a capacity of more than 50 tonnes a day	Part A	Part A
incineration of hazardous waste in an incineration or co-incineration plant	Part A	Part A
operating a new boiler or furnace with a thermal rating greater than 1 megawatt but less than 20 megawatts (From 20/12/2018)		Part B
generating energy using boilers with a net rated thermal input of 20-50MW or a combination of appliances which when added together, have a net rated thermal input exceeding 20 megawatts but less than a rated thermal input of 50 megawatts.	Part C	Part B
incinerating waste, in an incineration plant, which is authorised for incineration of radioactive waste	Part B	Part A
incinerating non-hazardous waste in a plant that is not an incineration plant or a co-incineration plant, but which has a capacity between 50kg and 1 tonne per hour (3 tonnes per hour in Scotland)	Part C	Part B
using appliances to burn types of waste that are excluded from the Waste Incineration Directive and have a rated thermal input of 0.4-3MW	Part C	Part B

This guidance does not provide a complete list of PPC activities. If you are unsure whether you are affected by PPC, contact your environmental regulator or in Northern Ireland your local council.

What you must do

If your installation or mobile plant carries out listed activities you will need a permit from your environmental regulator.

Permits and regulators for listed activities

Activity category	Northern Ireland	Scotland
Part A	PPC permit regulated by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA)	PPC permit regulated by SEPA
Part B	PPC permit regulated the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA)	PPC permit regulated by SEPA
Part C	PPC permit regulated by local council	N/A

Contact your environmental regulator

You should contact your environmental regulator or local council for further information about listed activities. NetRegs does not provide detailed guidance on Part A activities.

If you are unsure whether you are affected by PPC, contact your environmental regulator or local council.

Contact your environmental regulator

Contact your local council

How to apply for a permit

NIEA: Apply online

SEPA: Application forms

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Permits

NIEA - Apply online

SEPA - Application forms