Transparency

As part of our commitment to improving transparency on the way charging schemes are developed, this page contains documents containing information on the process. Documents will be added to this page as they are developed.

SEPA has an internal charging procedure (60k) which details the development of each scheme.
Customers often stress the importance of minimising or eliminating surprise or last minute information on the movement of charges. We have produced a three year charges strategy programme (74k) for the period April 2008 – March 2011. This will provide our customers with longer term certainty on:

- our charges development programme;
- key initiatives;
- projected annual charge increases.
SEPA undertakes public consultation on changes to charging schemes where the increase in costs is larger than the retail price index (RPI) or if the structure of the scheme is changed. Click on ‘consultations’ on the menu on the left to view these consultations (past and present) (last 12 months only) and the responses.
View the charges benchmarking report (411k) which compares environmental protection charges in Scotland, England and Wales for 2005/2006. For more information, click on ‘benchmarking’ on the menu on the left.
In the future, we will publish more details of our approach to regulation, costs and charges calculations for major charging schemes and some sector specific charges. The first such paper relates to PPC charges for pig and poultry sites (120k) which meet Standard Farming Installation Rules (SFIR). Other papers will follow.

This document explains:

- our approach to regulating pig and poultry units under the Pollution Prevention and Control (PPC) Regulations;
- what costs we incur in regulating this sector;
- how we calculate charges to recover our costs.
At SEPA's request, KPMG prepared an audit review of the development of the Water Environment & Water Services Act (WEWS) resource plan - October 2005 (120k).

The audit review evaluated the process adopted by SEPA management when deriving the costs of implementing WEWS and allocating costs across the five regulated activities. This involved a review of the:

- approach to the project by which SEPA ensured relevant workload areas were included such that full cost recovery of WEWS regulatory costs was likely to be achieved;

- validity of critical assumptions (but not including assumptions of a scientific or technical nature) made by SEPA when determining workload and associated people and capital costs;

- completeness, appropriateness and availability of supporting information in key areas identified by SEPA – based on a sample of supporting information;

- reasonableness of the methodology and costing of workload planning information supporting the charging scheme;

- mathematical accuracy and correctness of the regulation worksheet;

- approach taken for allocation of costs across the five regulated activities.