SEPA - Eilidh Johnston
SEPA
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency are Scotland’s principal environmental regulator. Their role is to help protect and improve Scotland’s environment, maintain Scotland’s vital environmental resources and tackle climate and nature emergencies. Their Statutory Purpose is:
“To protect and improve the environment in ways that, as far as possible, also create health and wellbeing benefits and sustainable economic growth.” (SEPA 2024)
They have around 1300 people based right across Scotland from a variety of backgrounds, bringing a wealth of knowledge and expertise. In Shetland activities include: issuing permits for a range of activities that may impact the environment; inspections of permitted sites to ensure the environment is being protected; responding to pollution incidents; flood management planning and flood warning; and providing advice and specialist information.
SEPA have certain statutory duties that they can use to support Shetland Partnership outcomes, with resources locally that can support and align delivery. They have a role to represent, in a broad way, their responsibilities within the local area and can use this to work with other organisations to support the priorities of communities. They can bring knowledge and expertise in areas such as climate action, and can contribute to the setting and monitoring of targets.
More information about SEPA can be found on the SEPA website.
You can also view copy of their Corporate Plan (2024-2027) on their website.
Eilidh Johnston, Senior Manager for Water Industry and Rural Economy
Eilidh manages a team of people based throughout Scotland. She shares an office in Shetland with roughly 5 different teams, including the local environmental team who deal with responding to environmental incidents and with inspecting businesses. Staff from other teams are part of providing services nationally, including one staff member who works on equalities.
Eilidh feels that the Partnership can best serve the community through reducing duplication of effort and pooling resources on issues that matter. She sees the importance of bringing together all the key organisations that work in Shetland, and focusing on working together towards the community’s priorities. Eilidh believes the big issues can’t be tackled by one organisation; working in partnership helps to explore different solutions. Changes made through this approach can be more wide reaching and sustainable in the long term.
SEPA have targets around Climate Resilience and Net Zero. In the next three years Eilidh would like to see progress made on these issues, with delivery that is meaningful to people and the community.