The South Australian Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has published a Compliance Plan to provide a focus on its compliance activity for 2022-23.
Set up in five main targeted interventions the 2-page Plan establishes the Authority’s approach to compliance for each with a range of strategies to achieve its desired outcomes.
“These vary from targeting enforcement of legislation to improving administration systems to make it easier for the regulated community to be compliant,” EPA said.
It said its five targeted interventions were to Set standards, Inform, Enable, Monitor Compliance and Enforce.
As far as EPA’s ‘Set standards’ are concerned it is to have clear and authoritative legislation, policy and programs which outline our expectations of businesses and individuals.
“We review our standards often and in line with current science and community aspirations to ensure they remain relevant and cleared,” it said.
For ‘Inform’ it will “engage with business and individuals, providing knowledge and data in a variety of ways, allowing business and individuals to understand our expectation”.
For ‘Enable’ it will, through engagement, provide authoritative advice on how to comply with the law and invest in administrative systems that make it easier to be compliant with the law.
Monitor Compliance: “We assess activity against our standards and expectations and maintain a credible our interventions and response” and Enforce: “We require parties to make any harm caused and deter non-compliance by applying our regulatory tools and options to stop, sanction and treat non-compliance”.
To complete the Authority’s approach, it said “If we find a non-compliance, our priority is to stop, sanction and treat the noncompliance.
“Our response is risk-based, proportionate to the actual or potential impact on the environment, and considers the attitude and compliance history of the alleged offender.”
The two-page paper can be accessed at this PS News link.
