The Round Hill Society

Veolia 2015 Pursuing Pong Problems

Hollingdean Depot index

At the Environment Agency, we are responsible for regulating waste management facilities. Part of that regulation concerns the amenity impact of the site, which is the affect it has on the surrounding environment, both Human and natural. This includes odour, but can also be dust, mud, liquid discharges or any other impact the site is having on the local environment. Typically, we are only made aware of amenity impact through reports made to us by the general public.

Reporting an incident

When you report an incident to us on our incident hotline 0800 807060, it gets inputted onto our National Incident Recording System (NIRS). We use this to record where and when an incident is reported, who it is reported by and the actions taken as a result.

When the incident has been logged it will be passed to a duty officer, who has the responsibility for managing the initial reaction. They will inform both Veolia and B&HCC that a complaint has been received, and the road it was reported from. They will then conduct their own investigation and report back to us. Your specific address or personal information will never be passed on by us, but if you want to report directly to Veolia as well, they are keen to meet the residents and will assess odour with you if you wish. You should also expect to receive a call from our duty officer to establish whether the odour is still present, exactly what you have experienced and to fill any gaps in the information you have left. We are not able to attend every time a complaint is made, but must always assess the risk and seriousness of the incident. At present we will generally attend if we receive 3 or more complaints, provided we can establish that the odour is still present. It is vitally important that we are provided with accurate information on strength and duration of odour. Odour is transient and variable, and the more detail you can give on what you have experienced the better for us in determining patterns and potential solutions. Likewise, please do not feel tempted to exaggerate the strength of odour you are experiencing. This is a natural reaction as you may feel it would get taken more seriously, but it can do the opposite in the long term if we are attending reports of very strong odours and finding that it is actually very mild or not there at all.

What action can we take?

It is important to understand that an odour being present is not in itself sufficient for us to take action against a waste site. We regulate against the conditions in the Environmental Permit, and can only record a breach against the site if they have not met the requirements stated in them. For your information, the relevant condition is as follows:

This means that in order for us to score a breach of permit at the transfer station, we have to not only perceive the odour ourselves, but we have to be certain that it is originating from that site, rather than the council depot, street bins or dustcarts, and we have to show that they have not breached their odour management plan, which is what is used to determine appropriate measures. Veolia are very strict about working to the odour management plan, and we have only found them to be non-compliant with it on one occasion in the last couple of years, and that led to a permit breach. In order to take more serious actions such as enforcement notices, prosecution or permit revocation there would have to be sustained non-compliance with the permit and an unwillingness to put it right, and neither of these things are happening here.

However, we are working with Veolia to make any improvements they can to actively prevent odour being generated, and this has led to the doors being limited in how high they open to reduce exposure time. Further improvements are being investigated, and I hope they will be able to reduce any odour you are experiencing.

If you have any enquiries that aren’t reporting odour, you can e-mail me directly at chris.parkin@environment- agency.gov.uk and I will answer whatever I can.