DOING THE RIGHT THINGS II

Pursuant to the Recommendation providing for minimum criteria for environmental inspections (RMCEI) all inspection activities should be planned in advance. Practitioners have expressed the need for guidance to help the implementation of the minimum criteria on planning in the RMCEI. This guidance book was produced for that purpose. The guidance book takes as starting point the Environmental Inspection Cycle, which for the purpose of this guidance book consists out of the following seven steps:

1. Describing the context
2. Setting priorities
3. Defining objectives and strategies
4. Planning and review
5. Execution framework
6. Execution and reporting
7. Performance monitoring

The first 4 steps form the Planning Cycle. The output of the Planning Cycle is the inspection plan. In order to write the inspection plan the inspecting authority first has to identify the relevant activities that should be covered by the inspection plan and gather information on these activities. With this information the inspecting authority can perform an assessment of the risks of the identified activities and assign priorities to these activities. Typical criteria that are taken into account when setting priorities are environmental impact, compliance record, legal obligations to inspect, (national) policies and objectives and available resources. The priorities indicate what activities should get (the highest) attention. A following step is to define (measurable) inspection objectives and targets for the activities to be inspected and to choose the best inspection strategy to accomplish these targets.

All these steps contribute to the inspection plan. The inspection plan clearly indicates the time period and area it covers. An inspection plan outlines the context in which the inspecting authority performs its inspections. It describes the mission and objectives of the inspecting authority, its statutory tasks and inspection obligations and (national) policies to be implemented. An inspection plan furthermore gives an overview of the priorities that have been assigned and explains why and how these priorities were set. The plan also gives general information on inspection targets, strategies, procedures and the planned inspection activities themselves. The inspection schedule describes what, where, when and by whom the different types of inspection activities will be executed. The inspection plan and the inspection schedule need to be reviewed and - when appropriate - revised periodically.

The planning steps are described in this guidance book first at a more general level in chapter 3 and then at a more detailed level in chapter 4.