Industry

MRF inspections could cost £2,240 per annum

The Environment Agency (EA) has launched a consultation into its proposals to charge £2,240 to conduct material recovery facility (MRF) inspections.

Under the MRF Regulations (part of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2014), from 1 October 2014, MRFs processing more than 1,000 tonnes of mixed waste per annum will have to test the composition of samples of the material they put into the sorting process (such as glass, metal, paper and plastic), and the useable output, and report them to the Environment Agency (for MRFs in England) or Natural Resources Wales (for MRFs in Wales).

It is hoped the law will ‘help stimulate the market conditions necessary to improve the quality of the material produced by materials facilities so that it can be more readily recycled’.

All MRFs will also be liable to at least two inspections by the EA/Natural Resources Wales in regards to their compliance: one pre-arranged and one unannounced. However, any MRFs found to be ‘underperforming’ will be visited more frequently.

The regulations will affect approximately 200 existing waste permit holders in England.

MRF inspection cost details

To cover the costs of the MRF Regulations work, the EA is proposing charging MRF operators an annual levy of £2,240 (in addition to the current annual permit subsistence charge).

According to the EA, this is slightly more than they had originally envisaged (£2,000) because it ‘now [has] a clearer understanding of the amount of data that will have to be handled and will need more resources and a system to manage it’.

The cost will reportedly cover the ‘extra time required for specific compliance and data handling activities in addition to [its] existing work associated with these sites’.

These additional activities are planned to be:

  • maintaining records of who has notified as qualifying;
  • one pre-arranged inspection per site each year to check ‘sampling, measuring and recording systems to ensure reported data is representative’;
  • one unannounced inspection per site each year for the same purpose;
  • a small number of ‘short additional visits’ to ‘underperformers’;
  • receipt of reported data, ‘chasing missing submissions, putting it on public registers, dealing with data queries and forwarding the combined data set for publication on the web’; and
  • administrative and IT system support costs associated with the above.

Charges will be raised in arrears and billed in February of each year for all reporting periods of the previous calendar year that were covered by a notification.

In the first year of charging (invoices issued February 2015, relating to the period ending 31 December 2014) the charge will be one third of the annual rate (£750) to ‘reflect the regulations coming into effect late in the year’. The full charge will first come into effect from February 2016.

The EA has warned that even if a site fails to meet the MRF Regulations criteria, it will still have to pay the fee, and that there will be no refunds. (However, last week the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) issued sampling and testing guidance for MRF operators, to help them comply with the requirements of the new regulations.)

The ‘Material Recovery Facilities consultation document 2014asks stakeholders whether they ‘support the activities listed and therefore a charge for applicable facilities of £2,240 per annum’. Responses can be submitted until 20 June 2014, and can be made online, by post or through email.

National Definition of Waste Panel

The consultation also covers a separate proposed new charging arrangement in respect of the provision of advice from the EA’s Definition of Waste (DoW) Panel.

This panel supports business by helping to identify where ‘end of waste’ has been demonstrated, and therefore when waste regulatory controls no longer apply.

According to the EA, the body currently receives around 60 submissions per year, but due to ‘the increase in high profile challenges’, the costs to continue to run the DoW panel as it is, are ‘likely to rise’. Indeed, the EA estimates that current staffing costs are in excess of £200,000 per year.

As such, it is now considered ‘unsustainable’ to not charge for the service (potentially compounded by EA budget cuts), and the EA is now consulting on charging anyone submitting future requests for advice an hourly rate of £125, with a capped maximum of £5,000 for each waste derived product or by-product.

The EA has said that ‘the cost of this chargeable service to industry should be insignificant compared to the potential financial gains through increased market value of the material and removal of permitting costs’. However, it will also be offering free web tools and guidance for those not wishing to pay for the advice service, so that they can make their own determinations. These should be available from April 2015.

The consultation asks stakeholders whether they support the EA’s proposal to ‘recover [its] costs of continuing to administer the Definition of Waste Panel by introducing charges’, and whether or not they would use this service following the introduction of the charges.

Read the ‘Material Recovery Facilities consultation document 2014’.