Wee Notes & Breaking News
These are William’s notes and comments as the year progresses.
A wee rant on MGRA
Forgive me, but sometimes you just know that a Planning action is; a) stupid, and b) will be repealed in due course. This of course does nothing to help the person who, in this case, is simply trying to put a small extension on their house in the North Lanarkshire area. What am I talking about? Well the crux of this is, how do you assess the risk of mine gas in an urban area?
The Council has a new assessment tool which effectively places much of the urban environment in the Medium or High risk category resulting in each property passing through Planning to require a bespoke assessment. You could do a desk top study however, if you cannot proved that the historic coal mine seam is not gassing then you will have to drill several boreholes, install standpipes and monitor gas levels over a significant period of time which is ruinously expensive for a simple kitchen extension. But wait! the solution could be to bear the cost of additional gas protection measures for the extension - problem solved, except that this is also expensive for small extensions particularly if it entails a re-design of the entire foundation.
Here, however, is the kicker - for a property which does not have gas protection measures, what is to stop mine gas simply making its way up through the existing building and into the new extension? Answer - nothing, rendering the expensive protection measures for the extension pointless.
Of course Terrenus can help with all this but in my mind this is poor science, poor engineering and fosters poor development which is needlessly expensive for people simply trying to improve their properties.
Let me know what you think.
Fairwell to Jonny
Jonny Simpson joined us back in 2018 as a civil engineering graduate and relatively quickly he specialised in hydraulic modelling. Jonny is moving on to pastures new and we wish him well with every success in the future.
Welcome to Alisha
Some news, Alisha joined us earlier this year from the University of St Andrews where she studied Geology. Hailing from Dundee she has made the trip west and south to settle in the south side of Glasgow and so far Alisha has got involved in desk top studies, setting out of fieldworks, the description and assessment of soils for engineering purposes and the initial inputs for flood risk assessment (all while undertaking our onboarding programme and personalised in-house training. Its a full programme but she is still smiling.
At Terrenus, we thrive under a cross function team approach which sees our staff undertaking a wide variety of project types, under the tutelage of Seniors, to become what we regard as rounded professionals with skills in technical matters, word craft and project management amongst many other things. For us, this provides an excellent spring-board as our staff move towards some form of specialism. It is one of the fundamentals of our company culture.
Update on EASR
Many of you will already know about the changes to Environmental Authorisations in Scotland but a wee update is, I think, in order.
Many environmental maters have now come under the new Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018 (EASR) since November 2025. The aim of the EASR integrated framework is to streamline the regulation of activities in order to simplify compliance and support sustainable resource use. The EASR amends or replaces a number of different regulations. These include the following amongst others:
- The Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations 2011 (CAR)
- Pollution Prevention & Control (Scotland) Regulations 2012 (PPC)
- The Waste Management Licensing (Scotland) Regulations 2011 (including exemptions)
The new EASR are issued in the form of permits, registrations, notifications, or through compliance with General Binding Rules (GBRs).
Focusing on the old Water Environment (Controlled Activities) (Scotland) Regulations the new EASR lean on the SEPA publications WAT-G-023 and R-WAT-F2 amongst others which form the backbone of any new registrations with the aim to achieve a ‘Good Practice’ standard. Whilst the application charges are generally modest, working your way through the labyrinth of standards and guidelines in order to achieve a robust design is where Terrenus can assist. Feel free to give me a call to discuss.
Focus on Edwina Dominic
At Terrenus we are always happy to deliver Good News and today I want to tell you about Edwina Dominic. Edwina joined us in 2022 after graduating from Glasgow University in Environmental Science & Sustainability. As with all our staff, we favour developing a wide range of capabilities in your early career so much so that Edwina now has professional experience and capability in engineering geology including major earthworks and settlement analysis in Bishopton, water engineering including detailed hydraulic modelling using QGIS and HEC-RAS and contaminated land risk assessment involving a wide range of site investigation work, soil and water laboratory assessment and report writing.
Edwina is a capable and motivated person and we were very pleased to see her promoted to our consultant band within the company earlier this month. At this level she will be responsible for many more elements of the assessment, design and reporting elements of our projects and will refine her specialisms as she develops her career.
Currently Edwina is visiting her family in Malaysia although she has continued to put in a solid day’s work by taking her computer with her. Her now Scots accent has be marked upon by her folks.
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