Environmental Authorisations (Scotland) Regulations 2018: Proposed changes to the Charging Scheme

SEPA can charge for the services it provides. The charges can take account of several factors, including:

• Resource to carry out regulatory tasks.
• The nature of the activity and its risk to the environment.
• The development of supporting systems and services, including their operation and maintenance.

We have calculated the new charges as follows:

• Where appropriate, the new activity has been mapped to an equivalent existing activity and adopted the same charge. For example, we propose applying the same charges to the anaerobic digestion of non-waste material, a new regulated activity, as the anaerobic digestion of waste material, which is currently regulated.
• Where we could not map to an equivalent existing activity, we have determined new charges using specialist input based on the factors outlined above.

As outlined in our Corporate Plan 2024-27, we will review all our charging schemes to ensure that they are proportionate and fully recover our costs in accordance with the Scottish Public Finance Manual.