Current economic situation

We recognise the difficulties facing business and industry in the current economic situation. We have therefore worked hard to develop a suite of proposals that are responsive to business needs, whilst protecting the environment.

For next year we propose a baseline increase of 1.0% which  is at the bottom end of all current inflation forecasts for 2010/11 and well below many independent and official figures. This level of increase is intended to strike a balance between our intention to be sensitive to the economic situation for business and industry, whilst providing the funding to support the necessary duties that we must carry out.  

Technical changes to Environmental Permitting charges

We are proposing a suite of technical changes of which the majority are beneficial to operators as they lead to lower charges. These include:

• A lower application charge for a number of permits based on standard rules.
• Lower application charges for low impact installations that are not subject to standard rules.
• Lower transfer and surrender charges for Tier 2 waste facilities.
• A range of lower charges for mining waste operations, although a proposed increase in the transfer charge for this category.
• A suite of charges for the new standard permits arising from the Government’s exemption review.
• Two technical changes for closed landfills relating to what the trigger is for the variation charge and an operator applying to accept inert waste at a closed site
• A revision to the change we made last year to the complexity band for surface treating metals and plastic materials (2.3 part A (1)(a).
• The full implementation of Opra compliance Band F which was deferred last year.  

Extending the Unified Charging Framework

We also plan to extend the implementation of our Unified Charging Framework by migrating RAS and GW charges into this framework.

In the case of RAS we propose an additional change to charge for all our regulatory effort relating to the permitting and regulation of conventional landfill sites or new dedicated radioactive waste disposal sites used for the disposal of low level radioactive wastes on a time and material basis.

For GW we are introducing a new standard permit for disposing of enzyme-treated sheep dip with associated lower charges.

We are not proposing any changes for the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), however, in line with government policy we will start regulating the Aviation sector from 1 January 2010.  We propose to introduce charging for Aviators in line with the current suite of charges in place for EU ETS