Catalogue description Records of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution and predecessors

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution (HMIP)

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution (HMIP) was created on 1 April 1987 the Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate was transferred from Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to the Department of the Environment and together with the Radiochemical Inspectorate, the Hazardous Waste Inspectorate and a newly created Water Inspectorate, formed Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution (HMIP).

Hazardous Waste Inspectorate

The Hazardous Waste Inspectorate was created in August 1983 as the government's response to one of the recommendations of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, chaired by Lord Gregson (the Gregson Committee), whose Report on Hazardous Waste Disposal was published in July 1981.

In accepting the recommendations of the Gregson Committee, the government decided that this new function should be located within the Department of the Environment (DOE) in England and within the Welsh Office, the Scottish Office, and the DOE, Northern Ireland.

The inspectorate's terms of reference were:

• to examine the management of waste at all its stages;
• to advise waste disposal authorities on the execution of their duties under Part I of the Control of Pollution Act 1974;
• to make recommendations to ensure that standards of operation, site licensing and enforcement were adequate to protect health and the environment and were consistent across the country; and
• to periodically to publish a report.

The Hazardous Waste Inspectorate's third report (1988) was its last; it was succeeded by HMIP combined annual reports covering all these aspects of pollution control.