Under Article 7 of the Water (NI) Order, It is necessary to obtain the consent of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs to make a discharge of sewage effluent from a house or other premises, to a waterway or to the underground stratum. This is a legal requirement and failure to do so is an offence under this legislation. The requirement to obtain a consent to discharge applies to all proposed discharges and also to pre-existing discharges, irrespective of the date of commencement. The Department started issuing Discharge Consents in 1973 and to date there are approximately 140,000 records that the Department must hold on a Public Register.
This Register is now available to search for Domestic consents online. All Domestic consents from 1992 to present can be downloaded. It should be noted that, due to the age of some of these records and the change to use of post codes, it can sometimes be difficult to identify a specific consent. When using the search facility it may be helpful to note:-
- some consents were granted for site addresses and may be recorded as eg 100m N of a particular address;
- when searching for a particular road, insert 'R' as the record could either be Rd or Road, eg to search for Manor Road insert Manor R;
- If unsuccessful when searching by house number, search for road name, and
- for townlands or roads with different spellings try different formats as application may have been made under an alternative spelling.
If your consent is not available to download, please click on the "Request" button within the Public Register to email the team. All copies requested will be provided within 15 working days.
To search the Register, please click on the link below:
Domestic Consent Public Register