Undertaking licencing/permitting processes and ensuring compliance to meet environmental legal requirements.

Environmental permitting processes are essential for ensuring that projects comply with environmental regulations and legal requirements before proceeding. These processes involve obtaining necessary permits, licences, and approvals to manage potential environmental impacts effectively. Permitting processes typically include comprehensive assessments, documentation, and regulatory engagement to ensure sustainable project development while adhering to environmental laws.

A key component of environmental permitting is an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) aligned with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards, which evaluates the potential impacts of a project on the environment, identifying risks and implementing the mitigation hierarchy to, where possible, avoid an impact from occurring and where not feasible, recommending mitigation measures to minimise such impact. Complementary to this is the development of an Environmental and Social Management Plan (ESMP), which outlines strategies for managing environmental impacts during all project phases, from planning through to decommissioning and rehabilitation.

Water and waste management play a crucial role in environmental assessment. This includes obtaining water resources licences for projects impacting water resources and preparing waste and water management plans to ensure responsible handling of water and waste materials. Specific approvals, such as a Waste Management Licences (WML), are required for activities involving waste recovery, storage, disposal, treatment or transfer depending on the project specifications.

For projects related to mining and resource extraction, permitting includes Mining Right Applications, where required, which assess the viability of proposed mining activities. In cases where developments have proceeded without the required planning permission, a retrospective planning application could be undertaken under section 73A of the Town and Country Planning Act (1990) to address and rectify unauthorised activities while ensuring appropriate environmental management measures are in place.

By following structured environmental regulatory processes, projects take environmental requirements into consideration proactively in the planning phase often resulting in better engineering designs, more sustainable outcomes and often saving the Client money in the process through the promotion of sustainable resource management.