By Automated Environmental · Last reviewed July 2026. General information for Victorian businesses — not legal advice.
An EPA prohibition notice is one of the five remedial notices an authorised officer can issue under the Environment Protection Act 2017, and it is the bluntest: you must stop an activity until you address the risk of harm. The stop is not for a set period — it is tied to the risk itself. So the disciplined path back to operating is to work out precisely which risk EPA identified, put controls in place that genuinely address it, and document those controls so you can demonstrate them.
EPA Victoria's authorised officers issue remedial notices when a business is not complying with the Act or needs to address waste or contamination. The five types:
The other four tell you to do something; a prohibition notice tells you to stop until the risk of harm is addressed. (An officer who reasonably believes there is an immediate risk of material harm can also give a verbal direction — confirmed in writing, and you must comply with it.) Still working out what you are holding? Start with Received an EPA notice in Victoria? What to do next.
Most notices let you keep trading while you respond. A prohibition notice does not: the activity stops — and often the revenue attached to it — until the risk is addressed. Every day matters, which tempts operators to rush a fix, any fix, and hope to resume. It usually backfires: an ad-hoc, undocumented change is hard to stand behind, because what ends the stoppage is the identified risk being genuinely addressed — and you being able to show it. Under a prohibition notice, discipline is speed.
Nobody can honestly promise you a restart date — be wary of anyone who does. What you can control is how well you do the three things the notice's own logic demands.
Read the whole notice before changing anything on site: the activity it prohibits, the risk of harm identified, any requirements and their due dates, and who issued it — an authorised officer or a delegate of EPA (this determines your review route, below). The notice is the brief: controls that address a different risk, however sensible, do not answer it.
If the wording is unclear, send EPA's letter to us at /epa-notice/ and a consultant replies within one business day with a plain-English read of what it requires and your deadlines — free, confidential, no obligation.
The Act itself tells you what "addressed" means. The general environmental duty (GED) requires businesses to eliminate or otherwise reduce risks of harm from pollution and waste so far as reasonably practicable — and "reasonably practicable" weighs the likelihood of harm, the degree of harm that could occur, what you know or ought reasonably to know about the risk and the ways of controlling it, and the availability, suitability and cost of those controls.
In practice: eliminate the risk where you can — elimination is the most effective control. Where you cannot, use the hierarchy of controls to choose proportionate controls — engineering or administrative — that actually work against this risk, can be implemented at your site, and do not introduce new and higher risks. For common, well-understood risks, adopting well-established, effective controls is usually what reasonably practicable looks like.
Addressing the risk and showing you have addressed it are two different tasks — expect to demonstrate your controls, not just assert them. That is exactly the job of a site-specific Environmental Management Plan (EMP): it records the risks, the controls chosen and why, who is responsible for each, and how performance is monitored — a working management system and a regulator-facing record at once. A generic template cannot do this: a prohibition notice is about your site's specific risk, not an industry's typical ones. See what a notice-driven EMP needs to contain for the full picture.
You have options: genuine in-house environmental capability can do this work, and any suitably qualified environmental consultant can prepare the plan. If the stoppage is costing you heavily, a specialist that prepares notice-driven EMPs routinely — Automated Environmental does, with priority turnarounds for notice deadlines — will usually get you to a defensible, documented position faster. One honest caution: a notice being complied with or revoked confirms you met the notice; it is not EPA endorsement of your EMP.
Often, yes — prohibition notices are one of the remedial notice types EPA can review. The route depends on who issued yours — check the notice. If an EPA or council authorised officer issued it, you can apply for an internal review within 10 business days of receiving the notice (a late application may be accepted if EPA accepts your reason). A different, independent review officer assesses whether issuing the notice was the correct and preferable decision; the notice may be affirmed, varied, or set aside and substituted with a new decision. EPA must tell you the outcome within 10 business days of receiving your application — if you hear nothing in that time, the notice is affirmed and you must keep complying.
If a delegate of EPA issued the notice, EPA cannot review it internally — you apply to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) for external review instead. VCAT is also the next step if you disagree with an internal review outcome; either way, apply within 15 business days of receiving that decision or the delegate-issued notice.
Two practical points. Review does not pause the notice by itself: you can request a stay when you apply; EPA must decide that within 2 business days, and if it does not, the stay is automatically granted — but if it is refused, you must comply until told otherwise. And be realistic: review tests whether the notice should have been issued; it does not address the risk. The two can run in parallel, and for most operators fixing the risk is the faster route back to operating.
You can apply to EPA to extend or amend a remedial notice it issued — and the window is tightest for this type: at least 3 business days before the requirement due date (10 for other remedial notices). Provide your reasons, proposed changes and timeframes, what you have already done to comply, and supporting evidence — EPA also weighs whether you are making all efforts to comply. It aims to decide within 5 business days; keep complying with the notice as issued until EPA tells you it has changed.
No notice puts more commercial pressure on a business — exactly why the response should be methodical, not frantic: pin down the risk, control it properly, document it well. For experienced help with any of that, Automated Environmental works on notice-driven EMPs for Victorian businesses and knows that with an activity stopped, hours matter. Call 1300 39 00 39 to talk it through with a consultant today.
A prohibition notice requires you to stop an activity until you address the risk of harm it identifies, so it is tied to the risk rather than a fixed period. The practical path to restarting is controls that address the identified risk so far as reasonably practicable, documented so you can demonstrate the risk has been addressed.
Yes. If an EPA or council authorised officer issued it, you can apply to EPA for an internal review within 10 business days of receiving the notice. If a delegate of EPA issued it, you must apply to VCAT for an external review within 15 business days instead.
Yes, unless EPA grants a stay. You can request a stay when you apply for internal review; EPA must decide within 2 business days, and if it does not, the stay is automatically granted. If the stay is refused, you must comply with the notice until you are told otherwise.
Work from the notice: identify the specific risk of harm it names, eliminate or reduce that risk so far as reasonably practicable using the hierarchy of controls, and document the controls so you can demonstrate them, typically in a site-specific Environmental Management Plan. No one can honestly promise a restart date.
Related reading: Received an EPA notice? What to do next · The EPA told you to get an EMP · EPA notices explained: the five types · What is an EMP?
This article is general information, not legal advice. Notices carry hard deadlines — if you've received one, get advice specific to your situation promptly.