Accepting Responsibility
61. It is very clear to us that for far too many
businesses environmental issues are simply not on their radar.
Referring to the increasing number and complexity of environmental
legislation, whether intentionally or not, the FSB could not have
made the position any clearer when it said:
"The impacts of legislation and the requirements
that new legislation places on individual businesses can be difficult
to unravel. This is particularly true for small businesses that
rarely have any staff member with dedicated responsibility for
environmental issues or compliance. For the majority of businesses
environmental issues are not a core priority and there is low
awareness of environmental legislation that is relevant."[61]
62. The attitude demonstrated by the FSB might be
understandable, acceptable even, if the environmental regulations
with which businesses are supposed to comply were not mandatory.
We see this attitude not only as evidence of the Government's
failure to get the environmental message across to businesses
but it also speaks volumes about the prevailing attitude within
many businesses. The inadequate level and poor timing of communication
from central government is exacerbated by the mindset of some
of the businesses concerned. Without doubt, one of the greatest
challenges facing the Government is to make businesses fully understand
that they are as duty bound to comply with environmental regulations
as they are, for example, with Health and Safety regulations.
63. We have already heard that, according to Agency
figures, as many as 75% of SMEs are unaware of their environmental
obligations. The Agency also admits that, despite good initiatives
such as NetRegs, the vast number of SMEs makes it very difficult
for it to establish and maintain any useful contact with them,
particularly as they are largely un-regulated. The Agency has,
it told us, commissioned research into how it can communicate
with SMEs and is also training staff at local level to "carry
out advisory pollution, prevention and waste minimisation visits".[62]
Whilst we accept that it is early days yet with respect to
the development and introduction of a civil penalty regime, we
assume that an effective method of communicating with all businesses
to whom the penalty might be applied must be a fundamental pillar
of the structure of the regime. Failure to include an effective
communication strategy into the system at the outset may lead
to unforeseen rights of appeal being granted to those companies
who might seek to demonstrate ignorance .
64. We were also interested to hear about the respective
Codes of Practice operated by the ESA and FSB and which apply
to all their members. Quite obviously, in the absence of anything
better and more centralised, organisations such as these are going
to be key in both educating their members and getting information
into the relevant businesses as quickly as possible. However,
whilst ESA have what appears to be a robust Code of Practice which
allows it to communicate effectively with its membership, but
which also has very clear requirements for members to achieve
and then maintain a certain level of conduct, the FSB Code of
Practice and its method of communication did not appear as stringent.
In their written evidence, FSB state that "there is significant
scope for improvement in the communication of environmental obligations
to business. SMEs need information and assistance on regulation
affecting their business, particularly with regard to environmental
education".[63]
And yet, during oral evidence session, when asked about how FSB
communicates important information to its membership, we were
constantly referred to the FSB in-house magazine, which appears
to be the main, if not only, tool used for this purpose. To
rely almost entirely on an in-house magazine, which may or may
not be read by those receiving it, is a very hit and miss approach
to educating and informing a membership who need to know about
fundamental changes which may impact on their business and we
would urge the FSB to improve its communication strategy.
Self-promotion
65. The evidence we took from the Ministry of Sound
raised some very interesting points about the conflict and contradiction
between the need for new and innovative ways of publicising a
business and the requirement to remain compliant with environmental
obligations. Mr Gary Smart, Manager of the Ministry of Sound
Club explained,
"Fly-posting is part of the whole network of
club promoting. Clubs and sales have their own sub-culture, their
own followers. They know where to see an advert; they know what
they are looking for; they know what catches their eye. To promote
a club night or an event there are only so many things you can
do. You can place adverts in magazines, which are somewhat non-specific
and a bit hit and miss. You can walk around all the cool shops
and the clothes shops and leave bundles of flyers, leaflets, which
is allowed, and you can randomly leaflet hand-to-hand in shopping
centres in busy areas and club exits. Another key part, which
has always been a key part, is fly-posting, whether it be legal
or illegal, in places where people stop at traffic lights or will
be in queues and will be able to sit there and read them and hopefully
what they see appeals to them."[64]
We cannot condone fly-posting under any circumstances,
but we accept that some businesses do fall outside of the more
traditional and accepted parameters for advertising. The
Ministry of Sound did express some interest in some of the initiatives
we saw when we visited Leeds during our inquiry into Fly-tipping,
Fly-posting, Litter, Graffiti and Noise; we would encourage
them to work with others in their industry, and the local authorities,
to find alternative and authorised sites for poster-based advertising.
66. We have already seen that the Ministry of Sound
does not have a particularly positive view of the type of person
they seek to attract to their club using fly-posting; it is not
a view we share. We choose not to subscribe to the idea that Britain's
youth are not environmentally aware, and cannot be "switched
on" to more environmentally friendly ways of advertising.
It could be that a company as high profile as the Ministry of
Sound, and others in this area of business, is missing an important
opportunity to lead the field on environmental issues in this
sector. The Ministry of Sound has told us that it is already
exploring the concept of text messaging as a method of publicising
its club nights and we would encourage it and like businesses
to pursue this and other innovative methods as viable alternatives
to fly-posting.
54 EC4-01 Back
55
WC4-09 Back
56
EC4-01 Back
57
Ev20 Back
58
Council Directive 99/31/EC signed 26 April 1999 Back
59
Environmental Audit Committee, Tenth Report of Session 2002-03 Back
60
The Environmental Audit Committee appointed a Sub-committee on
Environmental Education which is due to report its findings in
March 2005. Back
61
EC4-12 Back
62
EC4 -09 Back
63
EC4-12 Back
64
Ev48 Back
