Watch what we got up to at our Annual Conference 2023 in this quick video! Our conference for 2023 was held in The Guildhall in York on the theme Construction Environmental Compliance: What are the Challenges & Where are the Opportunities? We were delighted to have cohorts from across the industry represented in our programme,…
We are looking for volunteers to be part of a team working to draft industry guiding principles. If you are interested in being a part of this team, we would be most grateful if you could sign up using the form below before 01/12/23: https://forms.gle/p6okwAGGLAT9TYEj6 We are more than happy to provide further information on…
We were delighted to participate in Scottish Government consultation last week regarding environmental governance. We have supported it’s proposal to establish an environmental court, which we believe would enhance environmental governance and help drive up environmental compliance and outcomes. A critical element to this is monitoring data, and the role of an Environmental Clerks of…
As part of our ongoing partnership with IEMA, AECoW was invited to participate in it’s consultation on Environmental Outcome Reports through our joint Post Consent Environmental Performance Working Group. Summary key information is below and further information is on IEMA’s website here. The full final response from the Working Group is located here. – Q12: HOW…
We were delighted to meet the RSPB again on the 26th May. We discussed several items of mutual interest, including: – Parliamentary Questions– Planning conditions for EnvCoWs– Construction / temporary assessments of EIAs & RSPBs responses to them – Drafting Industry Guiding Principles for EnvCoWs– Environmental Outcome Reports– Potential areas of research that both AECoW & RSPB…
As part of the post-Brexit arrangements, each nation within the UK set up a new non-ministerial environment agency in 2021 (Environmental Standards Scotland (ESS), The Office for Environmental Protection (England & N. Ireland), and the Interim Environmental Protection Assessor for Wales). Their main remit is to assess public body compliance with environmental law, and to…
AECoW was delighted to meet the IES on 15th March to discuss opportunities to support each others aims and objectives. A key area we discussed was Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA). The IES has an EIA Working Group and it has published a recent paper here on the future of EIA, which was central to our…
On 4th October 2022, one of our Management Committee represented AECOW at the Cross Party Group on Construction in the Scottish Parliament. There was an interesting presentation on Scottish Government standards for net zero in public buildings, using the Fife College Learning Campus as a case study. Of more relevance to our members was the…
We are delighted to have met the OEP on 23rd September as part of delivering our Strategy to define, and promote, the role of an EnvCoW. The purpose, and format, of the meeting was similar to other Government Agency meetings which we have hosted (such as Environmental Standards Scotland and the NIEA) whereby we highlighted…
As part of delivering our Action Plan, Defining & Promoting the Role of an EnvCoW, we met with Oxford Brookes Uni and the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) on 31st May to discuss potential research opportunities and joint guidance. A few key post-grad research topics that we highlighted included: The Role of an EnvCoW Auditing models /…