Landfills for inert waste

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Environment Agency

January 17

08:30 2024

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This guide describes the requirements for landfills for inert waste.

Inert waste is waste that does not undergo any significant physical, chemical or biological transformations.

Inert waste will not dissolve, burn or otherwise physically or chemically react, biodegrade or adversely affect other matter that it comes into contact with, in a way likely to cause environmental pollution or harm to human health.

The total leachability and pollutant content of the waste and the ecotoxicity of the leachate must:

be insignificant
not endanger the quality of surface water or groundwater

This guide includes, or links to, the information you need to apply for and operate under a landfill permit for inert waste.

Application forms

To apply for an environmental permit for a landfill for inert waste, you need to complete and submit:

If you have a point source discharge to controlled water you must also complete part B6.

Understand your site

You must understand the environmental setting of your site. Read the guide for planning the environmental setting of your site to find out how to carry out risk assessments and background monitoring.

You must describe your site based on an environmental setting and site design (ESSD) report. This will help you know what risk assessments and management plans you need to provide with your application.

Carry out risk assessments

To find out how to do a risk assessment read the guide for how to carry out risk assessments for your environmental permit.

You must show how you have determined the risk posed by your site and that you have carried out an appropriate level of assessment. This must justify the risk assessment methodology you used. The level of assessment required for an inert waste landfill site or waste recovery activity may not be the same as required for a non-hazardous waste landfill site.

If your risk screening shows that the waste will not present a risk to groundwater or surface water, then you will not need to carry out a quantitative hydrogeological risk assessment. However, if your site is in a sensitive area, you will need to carry out a qualitative risk assessment, which may lead to a quantitative risk assessment.

In this guidance, a sensitive area means the site is:

on or in a principal aquifer or secondary A aquifer
below the water table in any strata where the groundwater provides an important contribution to river flow or other sensitive surface water
in source protection zone (SPZ) 2 or 3
in an area where groundwater provides a direct pathway to other sensitive receptors such as surface water, habitats sites or wetlands

Check what information you should include in your hydrogeological risk assessment.

The Environment Agency will normally object to any proposed landfill site within a SPZ 1. It would be unlikely to grant an environmental permit for an inert waste landfill site in a SPZ 1.

See SPZ and aquifer designations on MagicMap.

Where your ESSD confirms a risk, you must complete risk assessments. The assessments must show that any emissions from your site will not cause pollution and that any slopes at your site are stable. These include assessments on the impacts on:

slope stability
amenity value noise, dust and mud emissions
nature and heritage conservation (habitats) sites
safeguarded aerodromes bird strike hazards

To check if your application needs to include the impact on a nature and heritage conservation (habitats) site, complete our pre-application screening tool.

You must provide management plans to explain how you will manage all the risks you identify.

Financial provision

You must explain and be able to put in place financial provision for your landfill.

Protect soil and water

You must:

plan water management at your site taking into account the meteorology, hydrology and hydrogeology of the site
design the surface water drainage system to cope with predicted storm events

You do not need:

a leachate collection and sealing system
a landfill gas management system
an engineered cap

Surface water discharges

Where surface water from your landfill site flows into a watercourse at a single point or it goes to soakaway, you must assess the risk from that discharge. Find out how to do a surface water risk assessment.