What is Environmental Standards Scotland (ESS)?

ESS is an independent public body.

Our job is to make sure public bodies in Scotland, like the Scottish Government and local councils, follow environment laws.

We make sure Scotland has high environmental standards and good systems to keep them in place.

This includes looking at facts about how clean the air is or how clean the water is in our rivers, lakes and seas. We use the facts we find to check if the rules are working.

We can write reports on these facts about how to make environmental law in Scotland work better.

We also respond to Scottish Government consultations or give views and evidence on changes to environmental law. In 2023/24 we responded to 9 of these.

ESS will investigate if we think environmental laws have been broken or if there is concern the law is ineffective.

Members of the public or organisations can ask ESS to investigate if they think environmental law has been broken or needs to be better.

In 2023/24 we got 68 requests to do this.

It is important that we are accessible to the public. That is why in 2023/24 we launched a community engagement programme.

We can meet people and groups across Scotland and hear what they have to say about environmental concerns and environmental law.

All our work is published on the ESS website. Please visit our website to find out more information:

https://environmentalstandards.scot/