Changes to Waste Exemptions

You may remember our old post from 2023 (Waste Exemption Changes to Prevent Crime in Waste Sector – AC Environmental) and our more recent post from January of this year when the Agency introduced us to the coming changes to the waste exemptions regime. The changes were drastic, including removal of the scrap metal T9 exemption and major changes to the S2 storage of waste exemption. Another big issue was the change that meant that a permitted site could no longer also have exemptions. The permit, as the higher level of authorisation, was to be all important.

Well, it seems that those changes, long delayed, and still not implemented, are topic of the month within the Agency. We’ve had a flurry of enquiries from operators of T9 exemption sites for help in making an application for a Standard Rules permit. All have recently had a visit from an Agency officer advising them to do this. Some have been operating for years with no interaction with the Agency so it has come as a bit of a surprise for an officer to turn up and advise that they need a permit, especially given that there has been no announcement of an implementation date yet.

Mind you given the recent farce in the introduction of new Standard Rules permits (Changes to Standard Rules Permits introduced. – AC Environmental) which a good number of sites cannot now comply with and are faced with expensive bespoke permit applications to keep trading, there is a risk that the exemption regime is announced with very little notice. If that happens the industry could well be overwhelmed and operators might find help in making an application hard to come by. Perhaps officers are aware of this.

Links

The link to the proposed changes is Supplementary government response – GOV.UK

The link to the new standard rules permits is Extension to comply with new standard rules permits: RPS 331 – GOV.UK