At the end of November, the Environment Agency opened a consultation on reforming its charges for regulatory and non-regulatory work. Under the proposals put forward, the EA’s charges will rise significantly from April 2018 to reflect the true cost of delivering its services.
Our sister company, environmental consultancy Wiser Environment, has been reviewing the consultation documents to understand the implications for operators new and old – no easy task!
The EA’s proposals include:
- Environmental permitting pre-application advice from the EA will be limited, anything beyond this will be charge at £100 per hour
- The application fee for a Standard Rules Environmental Permit will increase by at least 60%
- Once an application has been submitted then additional requests for information from the EA will be charged at £1,200
- Permit applications will be based on a baseline fee with bolt on costs for additional items such as fire prevention plans, habitat screening and odour management plans – each costing an additional £779 to £1,241
- Where there are approvals required under the permit e.g. improvement conditions or other plans then determination of these will be charged at £100 per hour
- Where sites have Category 1 or 2 pollution incidents then resultant EA compliance workload will be charged at £84 per hour
- An annual charge of £2,240 will introduced for operators (MRF) who have an obligation to report under Schedule 9 Part 2 (‘MF Regs’) of Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations (EPR)
- An annual charge of £530 will be introduced for holders of mobile plant for land spreading in addition to the deployment charge
- An additional fee of £672 will be due during the first year of operation under a new permit, over and above annual subsistence fee
Wiser Recycling encourages all those affected to have their say. Visit the consultation website here. The EA has extended the consultation deadline until 26th January 2018.
If you require assistance to understand the full implications for your business or to respond to the consultation, contact Wiser Environment on 01480 462 232.