Consultation on our proposed Environmental Protection charges for 2008/09
(Responses due by 7 December 2007)
We are required by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to recover the costs of our main regulatory services from the companies we regulate. We review our charging schemes annually to ensure we are recovering our costs, and that our charges are as fair as possible. We consult with stakeholders before we make any changes to our schemes and their responses then form part of our submission to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for approval in consultation with the Welsh Assembly Government and HM Treasury.
We are launching our annual charges consultation on 14 September 2007 and it will run through to 7 December 2007. The document sets out our proposals for the following charging schemes from the 1 April 2008:
- Environmental Permitting (replacing Waste Management Licensing and Pollution Prevention and Control)
- Radioactive Substances Act Regulation (RAS)
- EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS)
- Integrated Pollution Control (IPC).
Despite our estimate that inflation and new regulatory duties will increase our costs by 4.7%, through our ongoing efficiency savings we have kept the baseline increase to charges to 3.4%. This is below the current Retail Price Index of 3.8% (National Statistics, July 2007).
In addition we are proposing to introduce a new Environmental Permitting (EP) scheme to reflect the forthcoming Environmental Permitting Regulations. We also plan to introduce Release 1 of the Unified Charging Framework to support the new EP scheme.
We are also proposing a range of technical amendments, mostly as a result of the proposed EP scheme, but also to our RAS charges.
We hope you find the format of the document easy to follow and welcome your comments on our proposals. As well as being able to respond by email or post, this year we are offering the opportunity to respond online (see the "see also" section on the left). If you have any questions regarding our charging proposals please contact Mr Alan Day on:
Tel: 01454 624 003
Email: alan.day@environment-agency.gov.uk
