In this section you will find information on the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) charging scheme and SEPA Charging Scheme Guidance. Information on exemptions can be found here.
Following the introduction of the Controlled Activities Regulations (CAR) from 1 April 2006 the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) Charging Scheme (78k pdf) will cover application, subsistence, variation, transfer and other costs for the regulation of point source, abstraction, impoundment and engineering activities. It has replaced the CoPA and Groundwater charging schemes. Charges for water resource and engineering activities are new.
Guidance on the Water Environment (Controlled Activities) charging scheme is available here.
The WFD Charging Calculator
The Charge Calculator (124k Excel) will enable you to:
- Determine the correct application fee to be submitted with any
application for authorisation (Registration or Licence) for new or
existing controlled activities under the Controlled Activities (CAR)
Regulations 2005.
- Provide an estimation of the annual subsistence fees which may
apply for the next three years to the authorised activities based on
charge bands which you can estimate.
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SEPA has committed to much greater availability and transparency during the charging scheme development process and the Water Environment charging scheme was developed in conjunction with the Regulatory Stakeholder Group and
the Scottish Executive. We also engaged KPMG to review and report on the development of the scheme and our resource planning - Audit Review Report (120k pdf).
The scope of the audit review was as follows:
- Evaluation of the process adopted by SEPA management in 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 have been included such that full cost recovery of WEWS regulatory costs is 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 supportinginformation 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.
A Question & Answer document (25k pdf) has been prepared to answer any initial
queries you may have about the charging scheme.
Charging principles - CAR
The full CAR charging scheme is based on the following broad principles:
Subsistence charges
- Charges follow a similar structure to CoPA charges with bands and multipliers.
- The charging scheme does not recover the costs directly related to a site. It consists of generic rules for allocating costs between licences. These costs will be reflective of SEPA effort. There is a degree of incentive provided for efficient water use which is consistent with the CAR.
SEPA have used indicators of effort to design the multipliers for each band. For example, the content band for discharges is related to analytical effort for parameters; the volume band will be related to frequency of audit visits and frequency of environmental monitoring.
The previous CoPA charging scheme only imposed charges where SEPA undertakes audit monitoring. The new regimes will also recover the costs of associated environmental monitoring.
- SEPA has introduced reduced or zero charges for activities delivering 'environmental service'.
Application charges
- Application charges are related to the complexity of the activities with increasing charges for registration, simple & complex licences.
Other charges
- There are charges for operator instigated application for reviews. SEPA instigated licence reviews leading to licence variations will not be charged. These costs will be recovered in the subsistence
charges.
