Chamber and committees

I see. So, that is different from what you are providing.

Do you measure yourself on the number of sites that you inspect, the level of compliance or the outcomes for the environment? Have the environmental issues been addressed?

I am sorry, but it does not.

I note from your own information issues such as

“Discharge quality failures ... Seabed surveys failing licensing conditions ... Medicine/Chemical treatment causing sediment samples to exceed environmental quality standards”.

On top of that, there are “poor data returns” for various reasons, whether because of the withdrawal of veterinary advice, the weather or whatever. I am just trying to establish a picture here. I understand that you are looking at the process while I am looking at the environmental outcomes of SEPA’s actions, but, as far as I can see—unless you can prove to me that this is not the case—some of those areas have been left wanting.

That is really useful. Thank you very much.

On the detail that you gave us on the number of announced and unannounced inspections that you carried out, you said that SEPA carried out three unannounced inspections of fish farms in 2023 and that you have three planned for this year. How many unannounced inspections did SEPA carry out for agricultural-based sites in 2023, and how are you working on enforcement capacity to ensure compliance?

Yes.

While you look for those figures, that leads me on nicely to the number of enforcement actions that have been taken. You said that, if satisfactory measures were not demonstrated and the situation was not satisfactory, that would lead you to issue an improvement notice and then escalate it to the procurator fiscal. What enforcement actions have been taken and have there been any prosecutions for failure to reduce sea lice levels?

Can you explain to the committee the practicalities of doing an inspection, asking individual salmon farms to put in satisfactory measures and then giving an improvement notice? That is all tied up with the next part of my question, which is about the no counts. Of course, a number of people are not reporting for various reasons.

Your approach sounds as though it is a little bit more carrot than stick. I would like the committee to understand the timeframe for going in, inspecting, saying that things need to improve and then being satisfied. How many times do you subsequently go back to an individual because the situation has not improved? You seem to be saying that there has been a breach at six farms but, looking at the raw data, there seems to be a more varied picture than that. There have been a number of breaches—more than you are describing—but they have not led to enforcement or referral to the procurator fiscal. Do you work out how long, on average, it takes for you to give somebody an opportunity to improve and to improve and to improve and to improve?

Okay. Maybe we will cover that later. I just want to know the average time, but I do not want to go into somebody else’s questions, convener. Can I ask about that?

Have you worked out the average time for one of these commercial enterprises to get back to normality or to the threshold level? Is that possible? Are you monitoring that? If I was doing your job, I would be quite worried if, for example, it took somebody six or 12 months to get to that stage.