NUCLEAR sites, King Charles’s childhood school and a famous battlefield were among nearly 1000 sites across Scotland which broke environmental rules in the past two years.
The Dounreay nuclear facility in Caithness was found to be in breach of rules on 11 occasions in recent years, making it one of the most frequent offenders in Scotland.
Dounreay – which houses radioactive waste – was a hub of nuclear research between the 1950s and 1990s but is now the site of the largest nuclear clean-up in Scotland.
There was also a breach at the Faslane naval base, although this did not involve radioactivity.
Gordonstoun School in Moray – which the King attended between 1962 and 1967 – the visitor centre at the Culloden battlefield (below), and a host of whisky distilleries have also been rapped.
The findings come from data released to The Ferret by the Scottish Government’s green watchdog, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).
The agency kept a further 25 sites which had broken the rules secret. The Ferret understands this is because they house radioactive materials which governments fear could be targeted by terrorists aiming to build a dirty bomb.
Campaigners described it as “alarming” that environmental rule-breaking was being uncovered “every 12 hours in Scotland”.
One opposition politician questioned why “repeat offenders are continuing to get away with non-compliance” and suggested Sepa may need to “pursue more cases through to prosecution”.
Sepa said compliance with Scotland’s environmental laws is “non-negotiable” and that it is taking “effective action against those who have failed to comply” with rules.
‘New approach’ SEPA issues authorisations to businesses to carry out activities which could cause pollution to the environment.
Sepa determines whether companies are complying with the rules laid out in these authorisations by carrying out inspections and sampling at business and industry sites across the country. Companies also report breaches to Sepa themselves.
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The agency used to publish annual reports on its website which ranked more than 5000 sites’ environmental performance on a scale from “very poor” to “excellent”.
Previous sites to be damned for their performance included Gordonstoun, Donald Trump’s golf courses, and the luxury five-star Gleneagles hotel.
But the last of these reports was for 2019 and information about environmental rule-breaking has not been available in recent years, which Sepa blames on the Covid-19 pandemic and a criminal cyber attack in late 2020. The attack caused the body to lose a host of information on environmental checks and pollution breaches.
In the aftermath of these issues, Sepa said it was developing a “new approach” to compliance. As The Ferret reported in 2023, campaigners and a former Sepa boss feared that this would impact transparency and mean the body stopped publicly naming and shaming businesses who flout rules.
Compliance information for 2023 and 2024 was only released following a freedom of information request by The Ferret. Detailed information about the reasons for breaches was not provided.
Sepa says the new compliance information is not comparable to the assessments prior to 2020 because it includes “different parameters”. Sites are considered either “compliant”, “non-compliant”, or “major non-compliant” at different times but are not given an overall rating.
In total, 966 sites were found to be breaking rules at least once in the last two years and there were 1616 instances of non-compliance overall, although some of these might be minor administrative issues. More than 600 of the breaches were in the more serious “major non-compliant” category.
Many facilities that Sepa regulates were not assessed in that period, meaning the extent of rule-breaking could be even higher. “The number of authorisations which remain to be assessed is approximately 184,000,” Sepa says
Nuclear and whisky
All 11 of the breaches at Dounreay were in the less serious “non-compliant” category and three took place before 2023. Sepa said they were due to failures with “process and procedures” for dealing with radioactive materials rather than releases of pollution to the environment.
A spokesperson for Dounreay claimed the “overriding priority” at the site is to “protect people and the environment from harm”. They added that Dounreay operates an “open and transparent” approach which means regulators are told directly about non-compliance, but did not provide any further information about any of the breaches.
Faslane – home to the UK’s nuclear weapons – was rapped for breaking rules in July 2024. The Ministry of Defence said this was due to an issue with the sewage treatment works at the base which has now been resolved and was not related to any nuclear material.
The Tobermory whisky distillery on Mull was also a repeat offender in 2023 and 2024, and was found to have broken the rules on seven occasions, with five instances considered to be major.
It was one of dozens of whisky sites that broke the rules. In total, distilleries were responsible for 60 breaches in the last two years with 40 of these considered major.
The trade body for the whisky industry claimed “the vast majority” of whisky sites are “consistently compliant with Sepa regulations”.
“The industry continues to work with Sepa and others to go above and beyond compliance requirements to ensure minimal environmental impact,” a spokesperson for the Scotch Whisky Association claimed.
A fish processing facility in the north-east village of Boddam, owned by Thistle Seafoods, had the most instances of major non-compliance. It had nine of this more serious type of breach.
Sepa said these were a result of high levels of suspended solids – particles that can damage the health of aquatic life – in waste water coming from the site. Sepa is working with Thistle Seafoods to return the facility to compliance and is satisfied that the company is taking necessary steps to fix the issue, it said.
The Kinneil terminal, owned by oil and gas giant Ineos, had four breaches, two of which were major. Kinneil’s environmental performance was consistently ranked as either “poor” or “very poor” between 2014 and 2019 as a result of gas flaring at the site in West Lothian, which processes oil from the North Sea.
Gordonstoun – which can cost around £20,000 a year to attend as a boarder – said its breach was the result of an “accidental leak from a heating oil tank which was immediately reported to Sepa” and was “thoroughly” cleaned up. “This was the only occasion in the last five years where we were not compliant,” a spokesperson added.
The visitor centre at the Culloden battlefield – where the Jacobite Rising of 1745 came to a bloody end – was considered to have committed a major breach in September 2024.
Some of the ultraviolet lights (UV) in the sewage plant at the Culloden site were found to be broken, the National Trust for Scotland said. These UV lights, which are used to disinfect wastewater, were fixed eight days after the issue was raised, the Trust added.
‘Twice a day’
The extent of rule-breaking by firms across Scotland has prompted concerns from campaigners and politicians.
Kim Pratt, who campaigns with Friends of the Earth Scotland, claimed the “alarming” figures released by Sepa suggested environmental rule-breaking was being uncovered “every 12 hours in Scotland”.
“That’s twice a day that companies are disregarding the environment, at the expense of all of us,” Pratt claimed.
“Environmental regulation is an essential part of protecting Scotland from pollution and as environmental crises deepen, such regulation has never been more needed. But to be effective, it needs to be enforced.”
The Scottish Greens’ environment spokesperson, Mark Ruskell MSP, also raised concerns about enforcement and that sites seemed to be able to repeatedly “flaunt the law”.
Ruskell argued: “We need to ask why repeat offenders are continuing to get away with non-compliance. It may need a change in the law to increase penalties or Sepa to pursue more cases through to prosecution.”
In October, The Ferret revealed that successful prosecutions of rulebreakers after referrals by Sepa had declined from 18 to zero over the last 10 years.
Liam McArthur MSP (below), the climate crisis spokesperson for the Scottish LibDems, said it was “troubling to see so many breaches across the country”.
“Sepa should explain how it is dealing with these breaches and what wider steps it is taking to prevent them from happening again – especially in cases of repeat offenders,” McArthur said.
“We need to see the Scottish Government finally treating environment protection as the priority it should be.”
Sepa said it aims to “ensure that all businesses reach environmental compliance at a minimum and go beyond it where possible”. “We are clear that compliance with Scotland’s environmental laws is non-negotiable,” a spokesperson said.
The spokesperson noted that tools at Sepa’s disposal to ensure compliance include fines and reports to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal. But “identifying and preventing potential non-compliances before they occur” was also a “fundamental” part of the agency’s work, they added.
The companies and organisations that own all of the sites named in this story were contacted for comment.