Baroness Parminter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Parminter on 2016-06-28.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of leakage at landfill sites in Britain, and what plans they have to investigate landfill sites to identify any that are leaking.

Lord Gardiner of Kimble

The Environment Agency is responsible for regulating landfill sites that hold an environmental permit, which includes all operational and some closed sites. Operators of landfill sites must comply with their permit conditions and these will normally include a requirement to monitor emissions or leakage. The Environment Agency assesses compliance with permit conditions on an ongoing site-specific basis.

The monitoring and management of historic landfill sites that are no longer operating under a permit is a matter for local authorities under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The Government does not hold these records and has therefore not made an assessment of leakage from these sites.