An Odour Management Plan sets out how a site identifies, controls and manages the risk of odour pollution so that it stays within its environmental permit conditions. If your site’s activities could generate odour, your permit will require you to prevent odour pollution, or minimise it where prevention isn’t practicable. What counts as an appropriate measure depends heavily on your sector and site, so your plan must be specific to your operations rather than a generic template.
Our consultants assess your site, develop an Odour Management Plan (or odour risk assessment) tailored to your operations, and liaise with your regulatory body to get it approved.
What is an Odour Management Plan?
An Odour Management Plan is a site-specific document that describes your odour sources, the sensitive receptors nearby, and the measures you have in place to help your site comply with regulatory requirements and prevent or minimise odour pollution. It’s a tool your regulator uses to check that your controls are proportionate to the risk your site presents, and a tool you use day-to-day to manage that risk consistently. Regulators often require an OMP as a permit condition to prevent nuisance.
The plan needs to reflect your actual processes, materials and site layout, not a generic industry template, because the odour risk at one site can look very different from another even within the same sector. Persistent unpleasant odours can amount to a public nuisance and negatively affect the surrounding community.
Key benefits of our Odour Management Plan service
- Develop and implement a comprehensive odour management plan or risk assessment, helping demonstrate compliance with BAT
- Remain compliant with your environmental permit and meet regulatory requirements
- Take the appropriate measures to prevent odour pollution, or minimise it where prevention isn’t practicable
- Receive site-specific odour control measures from our experts
What to expect
Our experienced consultant takes your industry sector and site-specific circumstances into account to provide tailored recommendations and actions. Every site is different, so we factor in the specific circumstances, measurements, costs and benefits relevant to your business.
Identifying odour sources, sensitive receptors, and odour risk assessment
The starting point for any Odour Management Plan is to identify potential sources of odour emissions and odorous releases across your site – this might be a particular process stage, storage area, or piece of equipment, depending on your operations. This stage should also include an inventory of odorous materials. That inventory should list all potential sources by intensity and frequency so the consultant can evaluate potential impacts and odour impact at nearby receptors.
Alongside this, we consider the sensitive receptors around your site, including nearby homes, businesses, amenity areas and, where relevant, existing permitted sites, as well as the likely pathways by which odour could travel from source to receptor to support any later odour assessment or odour impact assessment needed for planning. Understanding this relationship between source, pathway and receptor is what allows the plan to focus effort on the measures that matter most for your specific site, rather than spreading resource thinly across every possible odour risk.
Practical control measures
Once sources and receptors are understood, your plan should set out the practical odour control and process control steps used in day-to-day operation so emissions are effectively controlled, preventing odour pollution or minimising it where prevention isn’t practicable. These measures are specific to your operations and should reflect best available techniques and other techniques set out in relevant guidance for your sector, whether they relate to how materials are handled, stored or processed, how equipment is operated, or how site procedures are structured to reduce the chance of odour escaping. Practical mitigation measures can include maintenance, good housekeeping practices, and abatement systems as part of routine site controls. In some cases, suitable engineering controls may include biofilters or carbon scrubbers, depending on site-specific suitability and the expected effectiveness. Your dedicated consultant works through the specific circumstances, measurements, costs and benefits relevant to your business to recommend controls that are proportionate and realistic to implement.
Monitoring and record keeping
An effective Odour Management Plan doesn’t stop at describing controls – it also sets out how you’ll monitor emissions and odour emissions on an ongoing basis and keep records to demonstrate that your controls are working. This record keeping gives you an evidence base to show your regulator, and it also helps you spot early signs that something has changed on-site before it becomes a bigger problem. Monitoring should also track odour complaints from the community and relevant meteorological conditions. The right approach to monitoring and record keeping will depend on your sector and the nature of your odour sources, which is why this part of the plan is built around your specific operations to help demonstrate compliance with Environment Agency or other regulatory body expectations across different industries.
Complaint response procedures
Your plan should also include a clear complaints procedure, setting out how you’ll respond if a neighbour or member of the public raises an odour complaint, including contingency plans for abnormal conditions and incident response procedures. This typically covers how complaints are logged, how they’re investigated against your known odour sources, and what steps you’ll take if an issue is identified. If strong odours are traced to site activities, the plan should set out corrective actions and the incident response steps to be followed. Having this procedure documented and ready to use means your site can respond promptly and consistently, which matters both for maintaining good relationships with neighbours and for demonstrating to your regulator that you take odour management seriously. Unresolved unpleasant odours can harm community relations, trigger more complaints, and cause reputational damage.
Liaising with your regulator
Your dedicated consultant can liaise on your behalf with the Environment Agency, local authorities or local planning authorities, depending on the approval route, to help get your plan approved without unnecessary delay, then provide you with specific actions to implement it. This includes presenting the plan in the format and level of detail your regulator expects, and addressing any queries that come back during the approval process. It may also need to satisfy relevant guidance and regulatory requirements linked to permitting and planning. Where your plan needs updating later – for example following a change to your processes, materials or site layout – we can support you through that review and any further liaison with the regulator it involves, with updates as needed to continue to comply and meet regulatory requirements as operations change.
When should an Odour Management Plan be reviewed?
An Odour Management Plan should be reviewed whenever something changes on-site that could affect odour impact on the environment or human health – this isn’t limited to a routine periodic check. Changes to your processes, the materials you handle, or your site layout can all alter your odour risk profile, and your plan needs to reflect that risk accurately at all times. Reviews may also be needed where a permit condition changes, emission limits are revised, or industrial activities change and alter the risk profile. A complaint may prompt a review of your plan, so keeping it current helps confirm control measures remain effective and continue to meet regulatory requirements.
