Our Investigations

Environmental Standards Scotland undertakes investigations into public authorities’ compliance with, and the effectiveness of, environmental law.

Before deciding to investigate, we may have to carry out detailed enquiries to understand the nature of the issue and the grounds for ESS’ involvement. We will then assess whether matters can be appropriately resolved by agreement with the public authorities and without recourse to our formal enforcement powers. These enquiries and assessments fall under what we call our ‘pre-investigation’ work.

Where we have decided to investigate a matter of concern we will add this to our forward programme of work, setting out the broad issues that we expect to be investigating and the relevant timescales. Our approach to prioritising and undertaking these investigations is laid out in section 5 of our Strategic Plan.

This section of our website sets out the nature of the matters we are currently working on, which includes our completed and live investigations and our pre-investigation casework.

To raise an issue with us that you think we should investigate, please see our page on How to Raise a Concern.