The Environment Agency (EA) has made a small change to the process behind hazardous waste disposal which will affect many business customers.

The change is part of the government’s ‘cutting red tape’ programme, and has surprised us all in Cawleys Hazardous Services by actually reducing administration while still maintaining traceability and accountability which the Environment Agency needs, to record hazardous waste movement data.  Yes....we think it is a good thing!

What does it mean for you?

Under the current system, any site that produces over 500 kg of hazardous waste per annum, must register as a producer with the EA and receive a Premise Notification Code unique to the site.  This code forms an identity link and is displayed on the individual consignment notes.  Since inception in 2005, obtaining this code required time and money.

From the 1st April the current registration system will no longer be required, in favour of obtaining site identity through the producers name and address….at no further cost!

In practice the current code will be replaced with the first 6 letters or numbers of the producer’s company name with the next following 5 numbers or letters being still used to identify individual consignments.  Where company names are the same it is a valid postcode which will differentiate between sites.
So for example for Cawleys Hazardous Services we might create a code ….

CAWLEY/HA001

2007 Standard Industry Classification codes (SIC)

There is another part to the changes in that again from the 1st April 2016 the Hazardous Waste Regulations will now be adjusted to adopt only the 2007 series of SIC codes; the 2003 codes will no longer be applicable.  All other steps within the hazardous waste process remain the same.

What to do next?

We are currently making sure our systems are prepared for the change and there is not very much our customers need to do.  We will make sure the current Premise and SIC codes are changed on the 1st April to ensure compliance at all times. Up until this point registrations will still be required and mandatory.

However, if you need to talk this through and how it affects your business we are happy to help so please give Alan Colledge or Sean Lee a call on 0845 260 2000 or email us at alan.colledge@cawleys.co.uk, sean.lee@cawleys.co.uk.  Alternatively an email to our department on hazardous@cawleys.co.uk will always find us.