Environmental Standards Scotland - safeguarding Scotland's nature

Our blog today comes from Mark Roberts, who is Chief Executive Officer of Environmental Standards Scotland. Read on as Mark discusses the role of the organisation, highlights from their first year and how they work to safeguard Scotland’s nature.

Scotland has a wide range of environmental laws to protect plants, animals, habitats and people from harm. Some of these laws require reductions in carbon emissions, others set standards for the quality of our air and water, others aim to protect certain habitats. Having these laws is critically important for the environment but, equally importantly, those laws have to work and they have to work well.

When the UK was a member of the European Union, the European Commission oversaw how well the UK was doing in implementing environmental law. That oversight ended when the UK left the European Union.

The Scottish Parliament recognised that this left a significant gap. To fill that gap, it established Environmental Standards Scotland (ESS), which came into operation on 1 October 2021.

We are an independent body, accountable to the Scottish Parliament, not to Scottish Ministers, and have the task of assessing how well environmental law is being implemented by public bodies in Scotland. Our remit includes climate change, biodiversity, water quality, air quality, waste management and the use of resources. The public bodies we will likely be scrutinising include the Scottish Government, Scotland’s 32 local authorities, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, NatureScot and Marine Scotland.

The Scottish Government has committed to keeping pace with European environmental law and given the likely scale of new laws that will come from Europe over the next few years, that will be no small undertaking. It is our job at ESS to assess how well the Scottish Government is meeting that commitment.

Individuals and organisations can come to us to raise concerns about how environmental laws are working  We will consider whether and how best to investigate these. We may also start our own investigations where we have identified issues with how environmental law is operating. What we cannot do, is look at individual cases and decisions by public bodies, for example an individual planning decision or the management of a specific protected site.

We have significant legal powers and will use them where we think necessary. However, we will also seek to resolve issues with public bodies without having to resort to our strongest legal powers.

Since we started work in October 2021, we have received representations from both individuals and organisations. We published our first report earlier this month. It looked at how Marine Scotland were controlling the use of acoustic deterrent devices by fish farms. You can read how we worked with them to come to an informal resolution on our website (Environmental-Standards-Scotland-ADD-Case-Summary.pdf (environmentalstandards.scot).

We have also launched two major investigations. One in response to long-term failures to reduce levels of nitrogen dioxide in the air in some parts of Scotland and another examining local authorities’ role in delivering Scotland’s climate change targets. When we complete investigations, we will make our findings public on our website and bring them to the attention of the Scottish Parliament.

If you would like to know more about the work of ESS or how to make a representation, you can visit the website at the following link:

Home - Environmental Standards Scotland

Header image: RSPB Scotland Insh Marshes nature reserve, by Andy Hay