The DTI and devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are rushing through a one-month consultation to seek industry views on Agency fees to cover the monitoring of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) processing under the forthcoming WEEE Directive regime.
Chris Tollady, the Department of Trade and Industry's leader on WEEE has written to industry stakeholders to lay out the government's proposals and provide a partial regulatory impact assessment.
The proposals estimate the full cost to the Agencies at about 3.9 million, of which 2.9 million would be paid by producers in the form of regulatory fees. The consultation runs until Wednesday June 22, 2005.
Fees
Under the plans, individually register producers would pay around 730 a year each, while compliance schemes – including the retailers' compliance scheme – would each foot just over 12,000 a year. Compliance scheme members would each pay about 380.
The model assumes that about 10% of the estimated 7,000 producers of electrical equipment will register their WEEE obligations independently with the Agency, while the rest will join compliance schemes to have their obligations taken care of.
When Europe's WEEE Directive becomes law in the UK, producer responsibility for waste electronics will be enforced by the various environmental agencies in the UK – the Environment Agency, Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the Northern Ireland Environment and Heritage Service.
Enforcement
The consultation also confirms that the agencies will administer the registration of producers and compliance schemes as well as monitoring the registration. They will also be responsible for the enforcement action, with the aim of visiting at least 15% of producers to ensure compliance with the regulations after they come into force in 2006.
The agencies will also receive and monitor the data revealing the amount of electrical and electronic equipment a producer puts on the market and how much of this EEE is intended for household and business use. This is because producer responsibility targets are different for household and business WEEE. The agencies will also monitor reprocessors and exporters of WEEE.
The Agency fees will be reviewed after the first year of operation.
Regulations
The consultation on Agency fees comes in the same week Defra launched a consultation on licensing and permitting for WEEE processing facilities (see letsrecycle.com story). The actual WEEE regulations, which will lay down how WEEE is to be collected and recycled, are expected later in the summer.
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Mr Tollady told WEEE stakeholders: “At present we are working intensively to finalise the WEEE Regulations and Guidance.”
He added that the DTI is intending to issue a revised version of its guidance on complying with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive when the delayed notification of the Directive's requirements is made.
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