Annual Delivery Plan 2025–26

Our Annual Delivery Plan details our priorities and what we aim to achieve in the year to come.

This includes:

• the biggest pollution and waste issues we’ll tackle
• the targeted projects we’ll deliver
• the strategic risks we must manage.

Going beyond our core services, this plan also shows how we will track our performance and manage our budget for the benefit of all Victorians, our economy and the environment.

It’s informed by:

• Minister’s statement of expectations: This details the expectations of the Minister for the Environment, including what priorities they would like us to deliver on.
• Departmental objective, indicators and output: This states the high-level outcomes expected of EPA, including service outcomes and performance requirements. See our performance targets.
• EPA Strategic Plan 2022 to 2027: Our 5-year roadmap sets out our 3 strategic objectives, how we’ll achieve them and how success is measured.
  1. Our environment is cleaner and communities are healthier
  2. All Victorians reduce their environmental risks
  3. We have impact and influence.
     
     

I am pleased to present our annual delivery plan for 2025–26. As always, we are motivated by the impact we have on public health and our environment, and strive to deliver results that matter.

This year we continue to support the delivery of government priorities through our regulatory programs and projects, including our Office of Land Renewal. We are committed to creating a regulatory environment that encourages responsible innovation and strengthens our engagement with community and industry, ensuring their safety. This approach ensures our actions are not only consistent with broader policy directions but also responsive to the values and expectations of the Victorian community, helping us build trust and deliver outcomes that matter to both people and the environment.

Delivering on our core functions and key commitments has become more challenging in the past few years. Our teams are working to tight timeframes and budgets, while the complexity of our operating environment and demand on our services continues to increase.

So in 2025–26, we’re continuing our focus on strengthening the core services we deliver to ensure we’re a modern, risk-based regulator. We want to continue to meet the expectations of our community and duty holders when it comes to incident response, permissioning, and compliance and enforcement activities. To do this we’re focused on delivering projects that help us be more efficient and effective, that streamline services for those that engage with them, and that enable us to respond quickly to changes in our operating environment. This also allows us to concentrate our resources on areas that deliver the biggest benefits to Victorians and our environment, while protecting the health and safety of our staff.

Since 2021, we’ve aligned our annual planning to key objectives and results. This was a great approach to kick start our 5-year strategic plan. Now in the strategy’s penultimate year, we’ve evolved our approach to ensure we continue to be driven by regulatory priorities, government commitments and strategic risks – as set out in this plan.

I am proud of the work we do at EPA and I look forward to working with our staff, partners and stakeholders to deliver on our vision of a healthy environment that supports a sustainable Victoria.

Joss Crawford
Interim Chief Executive Officer

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.
  
  

Our 7 strategic risks are the key areas of uncertainty that can impact the achievement of our strategic objectives. This year we’re allocating resources to reduce that uncertainty to an acceptable level.

Staff safety, health and wellbeing

By prioritising the health, safety, and wellbeing of our workforce, we can make EPA a great place to work and enhance our ability to deliver core services and achieve strategic outcomes.

Resources to deliver core services

We are committed to enhancing our resources to operate efficiently as an organisation. By optimising these resources, we can adapt to funding environments, labour market conditions, and drive innovation.

Effective regulatory performance

Effective regulatory performance is key to delivering on our mandate. Our goal is to prevent and reduce the harmful effects of pollution and waste on Victorians and the environment.

Cyber security, data security and artificial intelligence threats

We are committed to strengthening our cyber security, data security, and artificial intelligence management. This helps us minimise business disruptions and protect our integrity.

Use of science, data and insights

By ensuring our decisions and actions are informed by effective science, data, and insights, we increase our ability to make risk-based decisions that are timely, transparent, consistent, and proportionate.

Confidence of our authorising environment

We are committed to gaining strong confidence from our people, government, and the community. By focusing on relationships and managing them deliberately, we can adapt successfully to a complex and dynamic policy environment.

Appropriate conduct and behaviour

As a public sector agency, we hold ourselves accountable for ensuring compliance with legal and policy obligations, and appropriate conduct and behaviour. Our plans help us manage risk.

We have established treatment actions to mitigate these risks. The Senior Executive Committee regularly monitors and reviews the management of organisational strategic risks. The outcomes of this monitoring and review are reported to the Risk and Audit Committee and the Governing Board biannually or as required.

Projects

We are committed to the following projects in 2025–26 to support our priorities:

• Enabling land renewal for housing or community use
• Delivering the Environment Protection on Country Program
• Implementing Azure security architecture
• Upgrading our finance system
• Updating our air emissions inventory
• Improving our permissioning functions
• Replacing our health, safety and wellbeing platform
• Supporting small business through the Business Acceleration Fund
• Developing a spatial mapping tool for emergency animal disease preparedness and response
• Establishing a priority assessment team for permissions

Performance measures

In 2025–26, we’ll continue to deliver our core regulatory and enabling services to prevent and reduce the harmful effects of pollution and waste on Victorian communities and the environment.

Resources

We use our resources to meet our roles and responsibilities under the Environment Protection Act 2017. Our resources also enable us to continually improve its regulatory approach, build effective partnerships, and develop organisational capability and a high performing culture.

EPA’s consolidated revenue for 2025–26 is forecast at $175 million, with expenditure totalling $175 million.

The figures in the table exclude the annual depreciation and amortisation expense of approximately $12.0 million.

Our annual delivery plan builds on our achievements in each year of our Strategic plan 2022–27. It outlines what we’re intending to deliver over the next 12 months to prevent harm from pollution and waste.

Minister’s statement of expectations

The Minister for the Environment’s statement of expectations guides our annual planning. We report our progress through annual reports.

Download the full statement:

Annual delivery plan 2024–25

Annual delivery plan 2023–24

Annual delivery plan 2023–24 flipbook

Annual delivery plan 2022–23

Annual delivery plan 2022–23 flipbook

Annual delivery plan 2021–22