The 21-day non-compliance report for NSW EPA licences

Who this is forAnyone responsible for a NSW environment protection licence, and the site and environmental staff who will be asked, on day 18, what exactly happened and which condition it touched.

For most of the life of the Protection of the Environment Operations Act, a licence holder's reporting rhythm was annual. Non-compliances were collected through the year and declared on the Annual Return. The NSW EPA's licensing reform replaced that. A non-compliance with a licence condition is now reported to the EPA through eConnect EPA within 21 days of the licensee becoming aware of it, one condition at a time, and its summary is published. This guide covers what that means in practice and what a site needs in place before the first one.

What changed

• The Annual Return is replaced. Event-based reporting takes its place. Load-based licence holders still lodge a simplified Annual Return for the load data that sets the annual fee.
• Twenty-one days. A non-compliance with a licence condition is reported within 21 days of the licensee becoming aware of it.
• Any non-compliance. The duty is not limited to breaches that caused harm. A missed monitoring round, a late report or a limit exceeded on paper each count.
• One report per condition. An event that breaches two conditions needs two reports. A report can be cloned and the condition number changed where the rest applies.
• It is published. The dates, the condition number, an extract of the condition wording and the summary the licensee writes go to the POEO Public Register automatically.
• It is declared. The person submitting ticks a declaration that the information is true and accurate. Supplying false or misleading information is an offence under the Act.

What the report asks for

The EPA lists the details a report must include:

1. The date the licensee became aware of the non-compliance.
2. The date or dates it occurred, and whether it is continuing.
3. Whether it relates to air, water and land, noise or waste.
4. Whether it relates to a pollution incident.
5. The licence condition or conditions not complied with.
6. A summary covering, where known, the location, the duration, the suspected end date if it is continuing, the cause, the action taken to mitigate it and the action taken to prevent it happening again.

The report is separate from the duty to notify a pollution incident. That duty is immediate, to each relevant authority, under section 148. The incident notification guide covers it.

Why this is harder than it sounds

The clock starts when the licensee becomes aware. The EPA names inspections, audits, monitoring results, incident investigations and reports from employees, contractors or the community as ways that happens. On a construction site it is usually a site engineer noticing that the weekly discharge sample was not taken, or a laboratory report arriving with an exceedance from last week.

Inside 21 days the site has to establish what happened, which condition it breaches, whether any other condition is touched by the same event, what the wording of each condition is, what evidence exists, and what has been done about it. Then someone has to declare it true and submit it, knowing the summary will be public.

Most sites can answer all of that. Few can answer it quickly, for every condition, every time. The gap is the register.

What a register needs to hold for this

A register that is ready for the report holds, for every condition on the licence:

1. The condition as written. Not a paraphrase. The register has to carry the verbatim text of the current version, because an extract of it is published.
2. The condition number, on the current licence. Licences are varied. A register built from an old version cites the wrong number.
3. The trigger and cadence. Weekly, monthly, on rainfall, on notification. A missed monitoring round is only visible as a non-compliance if the register knows when the round was due.
4. The evidence chain. The samples, inspections and reports that discharge the condition, dated and attributable, so the report can say what was and was not done.
5. The awareness date and the action. When the site found out, who is fixing it, by when, and the record that closes it out.

The guide to reading EPA licence conditions covers how L, O, M, R and E conditions are structured, which decides how the register is laid out.

How claused. answers it

claused. reads the licence into a register with the verbatim text of every condition, its number and its page, and holds each row for review by a qualified person before it counts. Field inspections, observations and incidents are tagged to the conditions they evidence, and inspection forms can carry a condition's limit so a reading outside it is flagged as it is entered.

When a non-compliance is found, the incident record links to the conditions it touches and records when the site became aware, and claused. counts down the 21 days from that date. The export produces one report per condition, laid out in the order eConnect EPA asks for it: the dates, the condition number and its wording, the category, the summary of location, cause and actions, and the evidence behind it.

Before the first one happens

• Load the current version of the licence and confirm the register matches its numbering.
• Set the cadence on every monitoring and reporting condition, and name an owner for each.
• Agree who decides that an event is reportable, who has eConnect EPA access, and who makes the declaration. Write it down.
• Run one drill: pick a monitoring condition, assume the round was missed, and time how long it takes to produce every detail in the list above.

If the drill takes a day, the site is ready. If it takes a week, the first real one will take longer, because it will not be a drill. The POEO Act penalties guide sets out what is at stake.

Source: NSW EPA, Reporting non-compliances for environment protection licence holders, updated 22 May 2026, and Licensing reforms: information for environment protection licence holders, updated 28 April 2026.