Environment Agency Inspections
The Inspection
Many of the Environment Agency (EA) inspections that take place, are selected on a risk basis.The EA are continually testing and collating data on main watercourses that have a high or increasing level of nitrates and or phosphates. Therefore, the EA may routinely visit all farms in a river’s catchment area and advise on ways to improve farming practices or look for any potential pollution issues.
Inspections are typically paperwork and farmyard based. Different EA officers will run the inspection differently according to which area they are from.
Some target the farmyard more than the paperwork and vice versa.
Paperwork Inspection
Once on your farm, the EA officer will ask specific questions that will determine the following:
- Farming practices
- Details about the farm and business, particularly relating to SSAFO regulations
- Schemes the business is part of
The documents they would expect to see from the farmer would be:
- NVZ records (if applicable)
- NVZ calculations
- Slurry storage calculations
- Risk maps
- Field records
- Soil test results (no more than 5 years old) for every field receiving fertiliser and/or manure at least
once in the last 3 years
Farmyard Inspection
As part of the inspection, the EA officer will also want to inspect your physical farmyard(s) to check all areas at risk of causing pollution. Most items checked will fall under the SSAFO (Silage, Slurry and Agricultural Fuel Oil regulations). Usually, they know what they’re looking for prior to the inspection.
The areas the EA would check are:
- Silage (pits and / or bales)
- Manure storage
- Slurry
- Other manures if within the yard
- Agricultural fuel storage
- Oil storage
- PPP storage
- Dairy chemical storage
Depending on the purpose of the inspection, the EA may also want to see nearby watercourses to check for signs of contamination, or to look at fields with potential or known issues with soil erosion and run-off.
