16 January 2025
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Businesses have four weeks to offer feedback on proposals from the Environment Agency (EA) for a range of charges for users to cover the costs of administering the F-Gas scheme.
The EA is consulting on the plans and says the impact of new charges for fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-Gas) and ozone depleting substances (ODS) service is “expected to be minimal”.
The proposals include charges for new registrations alongside subsistence charges for all users of the F-Gas and ODS online services. Examples include £362 for new registrations to the F-Gas scheme from April 2025, alongside a subsistence charge of £1,228 for all users. For the ODS service, new registrations would be set at £258 and a subsistence charge at £1,072.
The EA administers the online services on behalf of England, Scotland and Wales, using an annual quota and licensing system to make sure national and international obligations are met for the levels of controlled substances being imported and exported.
‘Quota’ refers to the amount of controlled substances that can be imported or produced in England, Scotland and Wales. This is described as equivalent tonnes of carbon dioxide for F-Gas, and mass for ODS.
These activities, including the technology developed to replace the EU services, have been government funded and are free for businesses to use. However, the EA says because the number of businesses using the services has increased, and the government funding it receives is no longer sufficient, it is not able to continue providing the same level of service without introducing charges to fully recover its costs.
For F-Gas it proposes to introduce charges for:
- new registration from April 2025 (£364)
- annual subsistence (£1,228)
For ODS it proposes to introduce charges for:
- new registrations from April 2025 (£258)
- new applications for import export licences (£72) and quota (£269)
- laboratory ODS service declaration (LabODS) (£476)
- annual subsistence (£1,072)
It further proposes to update its charges annually in line the Office for National Statistics (ONS) measure of Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation.
The online consultation, which closes on 13 February, is available here.
