Our priorities are driven by the biggest current and future risks to our health and environment. We also prioritise continuous improvement to the way we work and support Victorian Government commitments as set out in the Minister’s statement of expectations. We will report on progress against our priorities annually.
Our regulatory priorities are marked with an asterisk symbol (*).
Embedding a preventative regulatory approach through our regulatory priorities
* Preventing fires at industrial and waste and resource recovery sites
While industry awareness of fire risks has improved, fires continue to break out. These can threaten workers’ safety, cause air and waterway pollution, affect residents and disrupt waste services.
This year we will:
- target waste and resource recovery sites with ongoing compliance issues
- expand our fire prevention efforts to industrial sites, educating them on the management of fire wash water and other controls
- work with state and national partners on consistent battery disposal guidelines, acknowledging battery-related fires are an increasing challenge for the sector.
* Disrupting illegal waste disposal
From not logging the transport of hazardous waste correctly, to illegally storing or dumping it– waste crime is an ongoing challenge across Australia.
As waste criminals find ways around the regulatory system, we continue to disrupt them using the latest intelligence and data. In the next year, we will:
- improve investigation and disruption of those involved in illegal waste activities.
- increase the lawful disposal of waste tyres, asbestos, and other priority wastes.
- partner with co-regulators to better detect and target more waste producers, transporters and receivers who are doing the wrong thing.
* Reducing the risk of harm and impacts from landfills
Landfills continue to be a major source of odour, dust and other pollution reports, and many landfills have some of the worst compliance track records of all duty holders.
While we’ve cracked down on landfills over the past year, in 2025–26 we will:
- target operators with a higher risk of harm and who are persistently non-compliant
- modernise standards to incorporate advances in industry knowledge and technology
- ensure oversight and monitoring of the wider landfill sector by implementing inspections across a selection of landfill sites.
Strengthening a culture of environment protection
* Reducing impacts of pollution and waste from construction
Construction sites are a persistent source of noise, dust and water pollution, and waste.
We’ll work with major construction projects to strengthen their plans to manage risks on site, and deliver inspections at major, high-risk development sites to make sure they:
- properly dispose of their waste and contaminated soil
- minimise noise and dust impacts on neighbours
- minimise erosion and sediment runoff at nearby waterways.
Enabling delivery of Victoria’s Housing Statement
There are more than 100,000 contaminated sites across Victoria, and we can help safely unlock a lot of them for housing or community use. This is the key role we play in supporting the delivery of 2.24 million new homes by 2051.
We now have a clear regulatory model to help land owners, buyers and developers through the lifecycle of developing contaminated land and safely managing environmental hazards. In the next year through our Office of Land Renewal we will:
- launch an online triage tool and portal to support applicants during proposed developments
- set clear regulatory expectations to ensure environmental and human health risks are managed before, during and after development.
Risk of harm from climate change
* Addressing the causes and consequences of climate change
With more frequent and intense heatwaves, bushfires and storms, climate change increases the risk of harm from pollution and waste.
After releasing our Statement of Regulatory Intent on Climate Change, we will now:
- target major emitters and energy users through inspections to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase compliance with the General Environmental Duty
- help businesses understand their risks in a changing climate
- partner with other agencies to reduce emissions by sending less waste to landfill.
Caring for Country and Traditional Owner self determination
Embedding Traditional Owner values supports our decisions on caring for, protecting and restoring Country from environmental harms.
We will continue investing in our Environment Protection on Country pilot program, funding roles to support prevention of harm. In the final year of the pilot, we will also engage with Traditional Owner Corporations to determine the future model.
Organisational improvement
We will deliver multiple initiatives to strengthen organisational performance, develop leadership and regulatory capability, and enhance staff safety and wellbeing.
These include:
- updating our air emissions inventory to improve our understanding of where and how much air pollution is emitted
- delivering a program of improvements for our permissioning functions
- strengthening our cyber and data security by implementing new architecture
- continuing the upgrade of our finance system to help manage our budget effectively
- replacing our health, safety and wellbeing IT platform enabling a more proactive approach to staff safety.
Working collaboratively
We continue to collaborate with our colleagues in other environment portfolio entities and across government to deliver value for the state of Victoria.
For example, we will:
- partner with business and industry, and other parts of government to amplify the reach of the Small Business Support program to make compliance easier
- work with Agriculture Victoria to develop a spatial map to support preparations and response for an emergency animal disease outbreak
- do our part to support the Economic Growth Statement by establishing a priority permissions assessment team, to enable a faster assessment process to help drive investment into Victoria.
Updated