Waste-treatment plants – Pollution Prevention and Control (England and Wales) Regulations 2000 – Section 5.3(c) of Part I of Schedule I – Permit regime – Appellant seeking declaration that permit not required for sludge plants carrying out intermediate treatment of sludge for transportation elsewhere for further treatment – Whether permit required for intermediate treatment processes – Appeal dismissed
The appellant was a statutory water and sewerage undertaker operating waste-water treatment plants in the north-west of England. It brought proceedings against the respondent regulatory authority seeking declarations that a number of its sewage treatment plants did not require a permit under the Pollution Prevention and Control (England and Wales) Regulations 2000 (PPC Regulations). Under the PPC Regulations, which implemented the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Directive 96/61/EEC, a permit was required under regulation 9(1) for an “installation”. That term was defined in regulation 2(1) as a stationary technical unit in which activities listed in Part I of Schedule I were to be carried out. In the courts below, it was held that permits were required for, inter alia, three of the appellant’s sludge plants that undertook the intermediate treatment of sludge that was to be transported elsewhere for further treatment. These plants were considered to fall within section 5.3(c) of Part I of Schedule I, which covered waste disposal by treatment that resulted in final compounds or mixtures that were discarded by means of certain operations listed in Annex IIA of the Waste Framework Directive 75/442/EEC. The Court of Appeal held that the permit regime covered intermediate as well as final treatment operations.
On appeal to the House, the appellant submitted that the clear language of section 5.3(c), in particular the use of the word “final” to qualify “compounds or mixtures”, was decisive in its favour because a product that was to receive further treatment elsewhere could not be said to be a final compound or mixture. The respondent contended that such a construction was contrary to the purpose of the regulations, which was not only to ensure the environmentally acceptable disposal of the final product of waste management but also to ensure that the processes by which it was produced were themselves environmentally acceptable.
Held: The appeal was dismissed.
The wording of section 5.3(c) was not clear. It contained ambiguities that had to be resolved by looking at the scheme and purpose of the PPC Regulations and the Council Directives that they implemented: SITA EcoService Nederland BV (formerly Verol Recycling Limburg BV)v Minister van Volkshuisvesting, Ruimtelijke Ordening en Milieubeheer C-116/01 [2004] QB 262 distinguished. One of those purposes was to protect the environment against potential damage from the operations involved in the disposal of non-hazardous waste, including biological or physico-chemical treatment. An acceptance of the appellant’s suggested construction of section 5.3(c) would produce irrational results. The language of the section had a wider scope, and its meaning was to be found by looking at the eventual destination of a product when it was discarded. The coming into existence of the product and its disposal did not have to be simultaneous. The treatment must form part of a process that resulted in a discarded rather than a recovered product, but section 5.3(c) did not stipulate where that should take place. Any other reading would be contrary to the clear general policy of preferring recovery to disposal.
Lawrence West and Wendy Outhwaite (instructed by Addleshaw Goddard, of Leeds) appeared for the appellant; David Hart QC and Angus McCullough (instructed by the legal department of the Environment Agency) appeared for the respondent.
Sally Dobson, barrister
