Introduction

The Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) is an Executive Agency of the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra). The VMD manages the National Residues Control Programme (NRCP), which is a statutory programme that is designed to help identify residues of banned substances, veterinary medicines, and contaminants in products of animal origin which are destined for the food chain. The NRCP helps to protect human health and provides assurances to the UK’s trading partners about the quality and safety of exported products of animal origin. The programme helps to support international trade worth approximately £12 billion per annum to the UK economy.

Residues policy and surveillance is a devolved matter, so the VMD works in close partnership with the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government to deliver the NRCP in Great Britain.

The programme operates on a full cost recovery basis, so each of the livestock sectors that take part are invoiced each year. The programme currently costs approximately £6.6 million per annum, with a forecast to reach approximately £7m per annum by 2028. This is due to a rise in the costs of procured services which are necessary to deliver the programme such as sampling, testing, and consumables. Without the proposed revisions to the current charges that industry pays, it is forecast that there will be an under recovery of the costs of the programme by £1,000,000 in the 2026/27 financial year.

The aim of this joint public consultation exercise by the VMD, the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government is to explain and seek views on the impact of our proposals to increase the charges that industry participants in the NRCP will pay during the 2026 and 2027 financial years. As this is a statutory programme, to implement these revisions would require an update to Schedule 1 of the Charges for Residues Surveillance (Amendment) Regulations 2024 (Schedule 1). As this is a devolved matter, the UK Government, the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government would lay separate Statutory Instruments to cover food business operators in England, Scotland and Wales respectively.

The VMD works in partnership with commercial experts and our delivery partners to ensure value for money of the NRCP and a summary of this activity is described in the background section of the separate annex document. We have also provided additional background information about the costs of the NRCP in the annex.

A full regulatory impact assessment has not been published alongside this consultation, because the sum of the proposals falls below £10 million. Through this public consultation exercise, the VMD, Scottish Government and the Welsh Government are seeking stakeholder’s views on the potential financial and other impacts of these proposals.

This public consultation is strictly about proposals to change the statutory charges for the NRCP during the 2026 and 2027 financial years. Broader suggestions to amend the core functions of the NRCP such as the scientific methods, the veterinary substances we test for, or the frequency of sampling and testing is out of scope of this consultation. This is because those aspects have a separate statutory basis.

Glossary

A glossary of relevant terms and definitions is included for reference and should be read alongside this document.