The Latest Environment Agency Guidance for Noise and Vibration

Management of Environmental Permits Tony Clayton 1 Environment Agency Lutra House, Dodd Way Off Seedlee Road Walton Summit Centre, Bamber Bridge Preston, PR5 8BX. UK Julija Smyrnowa Environment Agency Quadrant 2, 99 Parkway Ave, Sheffield S9 4WF. UK Jon Tofts Environment Agency Rivers House, Bridgwater, Somerset, TA6 4YS. UK Gillian Brown Environment Agency Tyneside House, Newcastle upon Tyne NE4 7AR. UK

ABSTRACT

Environmental permits have conditions that require operators to control pollution – this includes controlling noise and vibration. The Environment Agency (EA), Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA), Natural Re- sources Wales (NRW)and Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) produced and published new guidance for Management of Noise for Permitted Processes in 2021, to help holders and po- tential holders of permits apply for, vary, and comply with their permits. The guidance is common to all four regulators. This guidance replaced the original Horizontal guidance for noise usually referred to as H3. The paper will cover the development, authoring and publishing of the guidance. It will also cover some of the reasoning behind and the major clarifications which are contained within the new guidance. Issues with noise impact assessments and demonstrations of Best Available Techniques and Appropriate Measures will also be covered.

1 tony,clayton@environemnt-agency.gov.uk

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The guidance was developed to be consistent with the noise policies of all four devolved govern- ments. The paper will briefly cover requirements of both operators and their consultants under legislation and the published guidance.

1. INTRODUCTION

The Environment Agency regulation of noise from Industrial processes substantially began with the introduction of the Pollution Prevention and Control Regulations SI 2000 No, 1973. For Industrial processes covered by this legislation control of noise was transferred to the 3 main national environ- mental regulators, the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency. Up until these regulations were introduced the Environment Agency had little if any responsibility for regulation of noise from industry or waste operations. Waste operators had traditionally been regulated by Local Councils using either planning conditions and as a backup Statutory Nuisance legislation. Over the next few years the Environment Agency wrote some noise guidance with help from an Acoustics Consultant. The 3 Environment Agencies pub- lished H3: PPC Horizontal Noise guidance in 2004 consisting of H3 Part 1 and H3 Part 2. In 2007 the Environmental Permitting Regulations effectively combined the PPC regulations and Waste Man- agement Licensing Regulations in England and Wales. However, Industry remains being regulated under the PPC regulations in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In April 2013 the Welsh region of the Environment Agency were separated out to form part of Natural Resources Wales. This now leaves the UK with 4 National environmental regulators of industry under 4 devolved government regions.

2. H3 HORIZONTAL GUIDANCE

The original 2004 H3 Horizontal PPC guidance consisted of H3 Part 1 and H3 Part 2. H3 Part 1 referenced the PPC regulations throughout the document which in England and Wales had been su- perseded hence H3 Part 1 was withdrawn in England and Wales as part of the documentation review for the change to Environmental Permitting. H3 was mainly a document giving an introductory ap- preciation of acoustics and noise. H3 Part 1 and Part 2 remained published in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

2.1. Reasons for replacing the old H3: Horizontal noise guidance

The old H3 was written when the Environment Agency had a limited experience of industrial noise regulation and control. The Environment Agency, SEPA, NRW and NIEA had increasing experience of noise impact assessment and noise control on industrial installations.

In England and Wales, the PPC regulations which were referred to regularly within H3 part 1 had been withdrawn in England and Wales but were still operating in Scotland and Northern Ireland. This can lead to inconsistency across the UK.

Much of the old H3 was irrelevant to noise regulation of modern noise conditions within Environ- mental Permits.

The quality of noise impact assessments and acoustics reports the regulating bodies receive are generally of a very low quality, with most being of little or no use for determining permit applications or demonstrating permit compliance.

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2.2. Issues causing delays in writing replacement noise guidance document

There was a lack of resources and funding in the early stages when the need for a rewrite was identified in 2009. As there was no dedicated resource the EA format for the guidance was continu- ally changing. After arriving at a first draft in 2011 the English government significantly changed its view on government guidance and required a more minimalist approach.

With the formation of Natural Resources Wales this now meant that there was now a fourth na- tional regulator involved, so now we had to agree between 4 national regulators under 4 different devolved government regions with 4 different national noise policies.

A significant further hurdle was that the Environment Agency lost its own website for guidance and had to publish on gov.uk which had a new set of requirements and very detailed requirements for wording, ease of reading and requirements for people with reading disabilities. It was very dif- ficult to satisfy these needs and yet keep terminology the same as in Acoustics Standards. 2.3. Withdrawal of the original H3 guidance parts 1 and 2 The original Parts 1 and 2 of H3 PPC Horizontal noise guidance have now been formally with- drawn and should not be used in the future. 3. THE NEW NOISE AND VIBRATION MANAGEMENT GUIDANCE FOR ENVIRON-

MENTAL PERMITS [4].

The new noise guidance was published in the summer of 2021, firstly by the Environment Agency followed by SEPA, NIEA. NRW provides a link to the Environment Agency noise guidance. The new guidance is common to all 4 regulators with only one minor difference in the Environment Agency version where a table in the SEPA and NIEA version is covered using body text rather than in a table format. However, the wording and meaning is identical in both formats and should be considered exactly equivalent. The guidance document assists demonstrating UK compliance with the EU Industrial Emissions Directive[1].

3.1. Main changes for the new guidance

The new noise and vibration management guidance is only 24 pages long compared with 120 pages in the old H3 guidance in line with government policy to reduce the amount and length of guidance.

The guidance is more accessible in the gov.uk format and is online.

The guidance makes it clear that for noise the terms Best Available Techniques (BAT) and Ap- propriate Measures (AM) are exactly equivalent.

The guidance makes it clear that Noise Impact Assessments MUST use BS 4142.

The guidance gives a suggested Noise Impact Assessment template.

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The guidance makes it clear that even if the operator is using BAT/AM if the noise impact is unacceptable that the operator will need to go beyond these measures or risks the permit being re- voked.

Vibration is covered more specifically in the new guidance.

The use of Soundscape assessment when considering noise impact is covered for the first time.

The new guidance makes it clear that the noise impact on non-human receptors needs to be con- sidered.

3.2. Noise Impact Assessments

The EP Noise Management guidance presents a 4-step method of Noise Impact Assessments. The 4 steps contain a desktop risk assessment, off-site monitoring, sound source assessment, and Noise control (BAT/AM) assessment.

3.3. Best Available Techniques / Appropriate Measures Assessment

The Noise Impact Assessment which must use BS 4142 along with the source assessment should be used to inform the noise control presented in any Noise Management Plan demonstrating the use of the BAT/AM to either be granted or to ensure compliance with an Environmental Permit.

3.4. Noise impact on Non-Human Receptors

The Assessment of the noise impact on other species than humans may be required. This may be due to the presence of protected species under EU directives. However, it could also be that other species are present which may be affected such as farm animals, stables, dog kennels, or even zoo- logical gardens.

Increasing research is being carried out on noise effect on various species, however much of the published research has significant issues with the acoustics side of the research. 4. VIBRATION

The latest guidance now requires the consideration of vibration. Vibration is difficult to mitigate retrospectively and should be considered early in the design stage. Any detailed vibration assess- ment should use BS 6472 to predict the human response. 5. SOUNDSCAPE

This is the acoustic environment as perceived or experienced and understood by a person in the context. This is a new way of considering how we react to sound in a wider context, looking at sound quality rather than just numeric sound levels.

Soundscape assessments should use ISO 12913 [5],[6,][7].

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It is likely that this will become of increasing relevance and importance in the future. As re- search and published soundscape assessments increase this will likely need to be considered. 6. PERMIT COMPLIANCE

A typical permit will contain conditions requiring noise to be prevented or where that is not pos- sible the minimized, rather than setting numerical limits.

Significant levels of noise pollution are unacceptable and permit applications causing this would be rejected and existing permitted operations will be sanctioned with requirements to significantly improve the situation. Noise has to be controlled by measures which are proportionate to the scale of the pollution. The operator is not in compliance with their permit if there is noise pollution that has not been prevented or minimized using noise control that is appropriate to the scale of the pollu- tion. The scale of the pollution is then linked to the scale of the pollution. It is likely that large scale pollution will need large scale solutions. 7. FURTHER GUIDANCE

The Environment Agency has a long history of using Method Implementation Documents (MID) for clarifying how to use various standards for monitoring pollutants. The Environment Agency is currently working on a MID for BS 4142 [3], and this is the subject of a paper by Julija Smyrnowa at this conference [2]. The MID is substantially along its development and It is likely that this will be adopted by other environmental regulators. 8. CONCLUSIONS

This paper presents an overview, of the latest noise guidance published by the Environment Agency, SEPA, NRW and NIEA which must be followed for processes permitted by these 4 national regulators. 9. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors of this paper are grateful for all valuable comments they received from colleagues from other departments in the Environment Agency when producing the latest noise guidance and also from the colleagues from SEPA, NRW and NIEA. Also, the assistance of Professor David Wad- dington of the University of Salford for his considerable work on the first draft of the new guidance. 10. REFERENCES 1. The Industrial Emissions Directive - Environment - European Commission (europa.eu). 2. Method Implementation Document for BS 4142- Julija Smyrnowa, Internoise 2022. 3. UK British Standards Institution, 2019, Method for rating and assessing industrial and commer-

cial sound , BS4142: 2014+A1:2019. 4. “Guidance – Noise and vibration management: Environmental Permits”, July 2021. Joint guid-

ance by Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales, Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Northern Ireland Environment Agency.

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5. ISO 12913-1:2014, Acoustics — Soundscape — Part 1: Definition and conceptual framework. 6. ISO/TS 12913-2:2018, Acoustics — Soundscape — Part 2: Data collection and reporting re-

quirements . 7. ISO/TS 12913-3:2019, Acoustics — Soundscape — Part 3: Data analysis . 8. UK British Standards Institution, 2008, Guide to evaluation of human exposure to vibration in

buildings , BS 6472-1: 2008.

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