Commission Impact Assessment

The European Commission has prepared an impact assessment of its proposal for a new Directive to replace Seveso II. A short summary of the assessment is also available.

Preparing the UK's Impact Assessment

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has contracted an independent market research company, ORC International, to gather information which will inform its Impact Assessment on possible changes to the Seveso II Directive. ORC International sent out a questionnaire to all COMAH sites in the UK collecting information on substances held and costs associated with compliance. We would like to thank the 278 sites that completed the survey online or by post and returned it to ORC International. 'The report of the final analysis carried out by ORC International is now available, see Final Analysis. It identifies that in around 70% of COMAH sites there should be no change of scope as a result of possible changes to the Seveso II Directive. In the remainder more sites would decrease in scope rather than increase. It is more difficult to assess the impact on sites currently out of scope of COMAH as the changes have not been agreed yet.