We want to hear your views on how we go about our work to hold Government and public authorities to account against their environmental commitments.
The Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) was established by the Environment Act 2021, and we published our first strategy and enforcement policy, setting out how we intended to go about delivering our mission, in June 2022.
We are now reviewing them to ensure that, two years into operation, we continue to play our full part in protecting and improving the environment as Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly intended.
Dame Glenys Stacey Chair of the OEP, said: “Hearing from others with a range of roles, interests, knowledge and expertise is of utmost importance to us at the OEP, and that is not just for individual pieces of work, but also for important questions about how we go about our work.
“We would like those with an interest in environmental protection and improvement, whatever shape or form that may be, to contribute to our consultation on our strategy and enforcement policy.
“In preparing the draft of our strategy for scrutiny and comment, it is true to say that we believe that much of our earlier strategy remains an effective basis on which to operate. However, we are proposing some changes where we think we can improve our approach and where we can make some aspects of our work clearer.
“Please have your say and help us shape the way in which we go about our important work.”
The revised strategy seeks to improve how we define and measure success, how we integrate our organisational values into our operations, and how we implement an ‘issues-based’ way of working, which means considering information from a range of sources on a topic before considering how we can best act to effect change.
In the consultation we ask for views on how we gather, manage and use information from a range of sources to determine how and where best to act, how we assess and report on government’s progress in meeting environmental goals and targets, and whether we are clear that information contained in complaints could be used by other functions in the OEP.
How to take part
Please give us your views by completing and returning the response form linked to from this page by email to consultations@theoep.org.uk or by post to:
Office for Environmental Protection
Wildwood
Wildwood Drive
Worcester
WR5 2QT
Please answer the questions that are relevant to you. You do not need to answer every question.
The consultation will run for 10 weeks from 18 July 2024 to 26 Sept 2024. We will then analyse and consider each response and publish a summary of responses alongside our final strategy and enforcement policy, which we are aiming to do by the end of 2024.
By clicking on the blue download buttons on this page, you can download the draft Strategy and Enforcement Policy and the consultation response form (available both as a PDF and Word document).
