9.1.2 Compliance Obligations & Evaluation of Compliance [ISO 14001 Procedure Template]

Your organization should set up a process that:

  1. Determines the frequency of the evaluation
  2. The execution of the evaluation
  3. The actions that need to be taken

If during a compliance evaluation, a failure to fulfil a compliance obligation is identified, the organization needs to take action to achieve compliance. This may require getting in contact with a regulatory agency to agree the action to be taken. Once that agreement is in place, it becomes a compliance obligation.

Contents

Compliance Status

An organisation in addition to evaluating the fulfilment of its compliance obligations, is also expected to maintain a knowledge and understanding of its compliance status.

As per ISO 14001:2015, Clause 9.1.2, an understanding of the organisation’s compliance status must be demonstrated. Therefore, your organization must have the means, via inspections, tests, and audits, that are frequent and robust enough to ensure that the knowledge and understanding of compliance status is maintained.

Compliance

Compliance Obligations Register

It is the responsibility of the Environment and Sustainability Manager to maintain and review the Compliance Obligations Register, specifically to determine:

  • Whether a piece of legislation, amendment to current legislation or new legislation is ‘relevant’ or ‘irrelevant’
  • Whether our organization is compliant with the legislation whilst describing how the requirements apply and what controls are in place to manage and mitigate the requirement and related environmental aspects
  • Whether other compliance obligations relevant to our organization and those that we have adopted whilst describing how the requirements apply to and what controls are in place to remain compliant
  • Update the register quarterly and communicate to relevant staff whose responsibilities or actions can affect compliance

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Updated: 26th February 2022
Author: Richard Keen

Richard Keen

Richard Keen

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