Environment Agency charge proposals for April 2025: Reducing waste crime and updating time and materials charges

Overview

The Environment Agency carries out a wide range of regulatory services. They are fundamental to how we protect the environment. These include flood and coastal erosion risk management, regulation of water quality and abstraction, waste, pollution prevention and navigation.

We know it works – England is a much cleaner, greener place because of our activities. We charge the businesses we regulate for the work we do to regulate them. We are committed to making sure our charges are fair and transparent. We want them to reflect the full cost of the chargeable services we provide.

To achieve this, we are proposing some new and updated charges for waste activities and hourly rates from April 2025.

Please note this consultation was retracted for a short period of time on 14 November whilst we fixed a technical issue affecting the page link for medium combustion plant charge proposals.

What we are consulting on

We would like you to share your views on our proposals to introduce new charges for waste exemptions, waste fee for intervention and the waste crime levy. These charge proposals are designed to fund regulatory work targeting waste crime. We want to:

• increase our enforcement presence to reduce poor performance in the waste sector
• stop illegal activities that are undercutting legitimate businesses

We are also seeking your views on our proposals to revise our medium combustion plant charges and our time and materials charges (hourly rates) relating to a range of other activities.

About this consultation

This consultation includes the consultation document and supporting documentation: 

• guide to how we calculate our charges
• draft EPR charging scheme from April 2025

These documents are available in the 'related' section at the bottom of this page.

The draft EPR charging scheme includes our proposed charges for waste exemptions, waste fee for intervention, waste levy and updated hourly rates (time and materials charge) for unplanned events and radioactive substances (nuclear and non-nuclear activity).

Any other charges that we update or introduce in April 2025 will be published on our GOV.UK fees and charges page.

Our proposals are set out in more detail in the main part of this consultation.

Why your views matter

We would like you to share your views and welcome your feedback as it helps us to understand the impact of our charge proposals and make an informed decision.

We know our charges can affect those we regulate so we have considered our proposals carefully. We are interested to hear how you think we might regulate more fairly, while safeguarding the environment more effectively. 

Responding to this consultation

This consultation runs for 10 weeks from 11 November 2024 until midnight on 20 January 2025. We will consider all responses received by the closing date before finalising our proposals to submit for approval by government. 

Please submit your response using this online consultation tool, as it provides an easy and efficient way to respond. It will also help us to: 

• gather all responses in one place 
• summarise responses quickly and accurately 
• reduce the cost of the consultation  

If you do not wish to respond using the online tool, you can download the response form (using the relevant link in the 'related' section at the end of this page) and email the completed form using the subject header 'Charges consultation: waste crime' to enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk. 

You can also view the consultation document by clicking on the relevant link in the 'related' section at the end of this page.