Environment Agency water resources charge proposals from April 2022

Closed 10 Nov 2021

Opened 18 Aug 2021

Contact

03708 506 506

enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk

Results updated 9 Mar 2022

We wanted to hear your views on our water resources charges proposals, which are being implemented from 1 April 2022. To do this we ran our consultation for 12 weeks from 18 August 2021 to 10 November 2021 via our online consultation tool Citizen Space and on Gov.uk.

We received 187 responses to our consultation, 143 were completed online and 44 from response forms or emails sent to us. You can find our full summary of your responses in this link to our consultation response documents: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/water-resources-charge-proposals-from-april-2022

We have reflected on your feedback and amended some of our proposals. We have changed the charges for hydroelectric power to be based on power generation. We have also created a specific table of charges for groundsource heat pumps.

Variations which are solely to reduce volume abstracted will have a zero charge and non-commercial schemes where they are solely created for environmental benefit will have reduced charges.

Our revised approach provides a much improved and consistent charging framework and will help to secure the necessary funds to cover our water resources licencing.

The full charge scheme for water resources will be published on gov.uk by 1st April.

If you have any questions regarding our summary, please email enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk or call us on 03708 506 506 (Mon to Fri 8 to 6). Thank you for taking part in our consultation.

Responses from this consultation have been used to develop our updated abstraction and impounding charge scheme. The new charging scheme will come into force on 1 April 2022 after approval by the Secretary of State, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and consent of HM Treasury.

Overview

THIS CONSULTATION HAS NOW CLOSED

 

This consultation seeks your views on charge proposals that we have developed to take effect in England from April 2022.

The proposals reflect significant changes to the way in which we charge for water resources abstraction and impounding licensing.

Why your views matter

We would like your views so that we can understand the impacts and benefits, as you consider them, of the proposals outlined in this consultation. We would also like to hear any suggestion on how we can improve these proposals.

Responding to the consultation

We encourage you to submit your response using our online tool which will enable you to manage your comments more effectively. It will also help us to gather and summarise responses quickly and accurately as well as reducing the costs of the consultation.

If you prefer, you can download the response form and once completed send to enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk before 11:45pm on 10 November 2021. Or you can submit your response by post sending it before close of business on 10 November 2021 to: 

Environment Agency
Water resources charge proposals from April 2022
National Customer Contact Centre
PO Box 544
Rotherham
S60 1BY

To request a hard copy of the consultation document or the response form, please contact us on 03708 506 506, Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm, or email enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk.

We estimate that it will take you between 30 - 60 mins to complete this consultation. If you choose to provide us with detailed responses then you may need to allow longer than this.

Please note it is not necessary to provide a response to every question. If you respond on-line and provide an email address, your response will be automatically acknowledged.

We will not publish individual responses but we will publish a consultation response document summarising key themes on the gov.uk website.

You will find supporting documents for this consultation at the bottom of this page. Please note, we have produced some maps to help you identify if the additional cost factors apply to your abstraction. You will need to review these to inform your response. 

Corrections made to the consultation documents update 15 September 2021

We apologise to our stakeholders and customers that we have made some minor corrections relating to the Supported Source charge tables contained within the “Draft Environment Agency (Environmental Permitting Regulations and abstraction licencing) (England) Charging Scheme 2022” on pages 135 – 140. The corrections are in Corrections to Water Resources tables.

If you have already submitted a response and would like to amend, add or resubmit your full consultation response, please contact enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk by 5pm on 10 November 2021 and we will consider your comments as part of our response document. Please quote the reference number you received for your original response. You do not need to resubmit if your response remains unaffected by the corrections.

We would like to thank you for your time in updating your responses and apologise again for the inconvenience caused. Please note the document was last updated on 15 September 2021.

Please click on the ‘online survey’ link below to answer the consultation questions.

What happens next

Our consultation on “Water resources charge proposals from April 2022” has now closed and we would like to thank all those who took the time to respond.

We will now be analysing these responses and using them to help develop the final charging scheme.  Our response to the consultation will be published in due course and it will be made available on this web page.

Thank you for your interest in this consultation, please use the contact details on this page if you would like to get in touch with us.

Audiences

  • Environment Agency customers

Interests

  • Business and industry
  • Water resources