These Regulations apply an integrated environmental approach to the regulation of certain industrial activities, particularly that of pollution prevention and control, and provide this regime for Scotland for the purposes of implementing Directive 2010/75/EU (the Industrial Emissions Directive) and of regulating other environmentally polluting activities not covered by that directive.
The Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) aims to achieve a high level of protection of human health and the environment by reducing harmful industrial emissions into the air, water and land and to avoid generating waste from large industrial installations. The IED requires operators to be given a permit to carry out their activities, regulators then check compliance against these permits and can impose penalties where they find issues of non-compliance. In this case, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) is the regulator.