Case study on environment protection regulation and wellbeing

While the work of environment protection agencies is for the benefit of everybody, often their work is criticised as burdensome regulation (see a recent article by Arlie Hochschild in the Guardian in the ‘related links’ section). Other obstacles that community-level organisations face in taking on a wellbeing agenda is the need to work in partnership with many other agencies and organisations in order to meet common objectives.

SEPA is the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and in addition to its main purpose of protecting and improving the environment (including managing natural resources in a sustainable way) it has the statutory duty to contribute to ‘improving the health and well being of people in Scotland’. We explore some of the issues that organisations such as SEPA face in this interview with Stewart Prodger, Communications and Customer Service Manager at SEPA’s flood unit.