Site Waste Management Plan regulations are set to be scrapped as part of a drive to cut red tape, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced on Friday (August 30).
Defra has published a summary of responses to a consultation on its intention to scrap the regulations and now intends to repeal the regulations alongside a series of other measures aimed at cutting red tape from October 1 2013.
Under the 2008 Regulations, all construction projects in England over 300,000 must currently have a Site Waste Management Plan (SWMP). The plan must include: what kind of waste the site produces; how the waste is disposed of; waste carrier registration number; and details of the environmental permit or exemption number of where waste from the site is being sent to.
The governments Red Tape Challenge sets out to remove regulations which are either ineffective or hold back growth and according to Defra, repealing the Site Waste Management Plan regulations should provide a reduction in the regulatory burden to businesses without any significant environment impact.
169 responses were received for the consultation on scrapping the regulations, which was launched on June 18 and ran until July 16 2013 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Responses
The reponses show a slight majority (49%) of consultees were in favour of the departments plans, despite also showing that the same number of consultation respondents were in favour of scrapping the regulations as were against (82 49%). Meanwhile, 3% of respondents to the consultation were neutral on the issue.
However, the majority of respondents also indicated that they would continue to use SWMPs or a similar process if the Regulations were repealed.
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The Defra document states: Repealing the Regulations will provide a cost saving to business, while giving the option of retaining SWMP as a tool that can be applied to any project to help identify savings.
Reducing waste saves businesses money, and with awareness and the appropriate guidance already available we would expect business to take every opportunity to reduce costs in this way.
Respondents to the consultation included the Environment Agency, DS Smith Recycling, Costain, Kier Group Ltd and a number of local authorities and universities.
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