Local Authority Environmental Regulation of Industrial Plant: 2014/15 Fees and Charges

Overview

The purpose of this consultation is to review the prescribed fees and charging schemes in England which specify the fees and charges to be levied by local authorities (LAs) to recover their full costs in undertaking their functions under regulation 65 of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales)  Regulations 2010 (EPR).
It relates to the charges that local LAs are required to levy upon the roughly 19,000 businesses subject to two industrial pollution control regimes they enforce. The EPR require charging levels that recover LAs’ reasonable regulatory costs.
The legislation states that an appropriate authority may make, and from time to time revise, a scheme prescribing fees payable in respect of applications for the granting of an environmental permit, to vary an environmental permit, to transfer an environmental permit in whole or in part and to surrender an environmental permit in whole or in part as well as charges payable in respect of the subsistence of an environmental permit. Furthermore in making or revising a scheme, so far as practicable the appropriate authority must ensure that the fees and charges payable are sufficient to cover expenditure by LAs in exercising their functions under the EPR.