Enviroman – Environment Protection, Operator and Pollution Risk Appraisal (EP OPRA)

EP OPRA – RISK BASED REGULATION OR STEALTH TAXATION?
Ongoing landfill tax rises (£21.00 per tonne for active waste in April 2006) coupled with regular increases in landfill gate fees are making it harder to profit from skip waste without having a transfer station or recycling site. Is it a coincidence that at a time when environmental taxes are rising to encourage recycling and recovery that the cost of waste management licence applications is set to rise sharply yet again? In April 2005 charges for waste management licence applications rose dramatically, 570% for applications to transfer licences, to pick an extreme example.
In September 2005 the Agency consulted on its new charging system, EP OPRA (Environment Protection, Operator and Pollution Risk Appraisal) version 3.1 and the consultation ended in December 2005, with the final document being issued (hopefully) before 1 April 2006 after consultation comments have been considered.
Rather than using ‘look up’ tables to calculate fees EP OPRA uses a complex Excel spreadsheet to obtain an OPRA score which then uses a fee multiplier to calculate application and subsistence fees.
Whilst larger sites may have a slight variation in application fees smaller sites will be most affected. At the ‘starter’ end of the market, skip firms are most likely to apply for a waste management licence to treat (sort) and keep (store) non-hazardous, household, commercial and industrial waste in the 5,000 tonnes per annum band. The fee for such an application was £1,705 from April 2004 and rose to £5,627 in April 2005.
What will the same application cost under EP OPRA?
Entering the details of several small operational transfer stations into the spreadsheet gave EP OPRA scores in the region of 50 to 55 points. With the fee multiplier set at £220 per point for new licence applications this will mean an application fee of £11,000 – £12,100, an increase of over 700% since April 2004.
Without talking through the system at length, most of you will be interested in the impact upon your site or proposed site and what you can do now. The simple answer is that if you have a licence application of any sort to be submitted in the next few months then you must calculate the fee to decide whether or not to submit the application before or after 1 April 2006 if you want to save money.
How will annual subsistence fees be affected?
Subsistence fees will be calculated using a fee multiplier of £75 which would place the same small site in an annual subsistence fee of £3,750 to £4,125, compared with £1,800 in April 2005. If you have had a letter from the EA regarding your site’s OPRA score in the last 6 months, respond to it as soon as possible as you may be able to reduce the OPRA scores by as much as 12 points on operator performance by querying the letter, thereby reducing subsistence fees for the site.
What factors are assessed when calculating the score?
The application fee score is calculated using four attributes each of which is scored in banded profiles using letters in the range A (lowest risk) to E (highest risk) as follows:
1. Complexity – fixed points based on site type (range of 4 – 65 points)
2. Emissions – variable points based on waste inputs for non-landfill sites (range of 1 – 7
points)
3. Location – fixed points based on location (range of 3 – 40 points)
4. Operator performance – variable points based on performance which is a combination of
paper systems and environmental track record (range of 2 – 14 points)
The main failing of EP OPRA is that the bulk of the score cannot be changed by installing better infrastructure. Your site type, waste inputs and location will determine over 80% of the score. This will, however, change when a fifth attribute, Compliance rating, using the EA’s Compliance Classification Scheme (CCS) is brought in which will reward better operators (more compliant) with a deduction of 5 points off their OPRA score and the worst operators with up to 30 points added to their score.
In theory an OPRA score can range from 10 to 126 points, with the potential to be as high as 156 points for the worst operators. If the Agency is truly to assess sites based on risk and their frequency of inspection etc. then surely the Operator Performance and Compliance rating scores should account for the bulk of the fee.
In reality there is little we can do to change the scheme drastically but making sure your application proposals are carefully considered before submission could save you a lot of money, which is better spent on your site infrastructure. Of the other changes to the fees scheme none is as significant as EP OPRA. Some sites will only have a minor increase in fees such as End of Life Vehicle facilities, whilst carrier/broker registrations and paragraph 45 exemption registrations will rise in line with inflation. Notifiable exemptions are not mentioned in the scheme.

Marco Muia BSc (Hons) MSc MCIWM is the Director of Oaktree Environmental Limited. He specialises in all aspects of waste regulation consultancy and is a WAMITAB accredited assessor for the COTCs in waste transfer, treatment and inert landfill. He also holds the level 4 COTCs for Hazardous Waste Treatment and Transfer.