皇家华人

Environment Agency to increase charges 鈥� have your say

17 April 2025

Environment and climate
Environment Agency sign

Photograph: Simon Vine/Alamy

The Environment Agency has opened a consultation on proposals to increase a number of regulatory charges to reflect additional costs. 皇家华人will be responding and wants to hear your feedback by 14 May.聽

The Environment Agency says that the overall costs of employing its staff have increased due to the government approved pay award and employer National Insurance contributions.

In addition, it also needs to cover increased costs relating to corporate service and IT systems development costs. As a result, the Agency is consulting on a one-off increase for some charges (in the range of 7.5 % 鈥� 14 %) in the Environmental Permitting and waste charging schemes in the current period 2025-2026.

From 2026, the Agency proposes to update all charges in line with inflation.

How does this affect me?

The Agency鈥檚 proposed increases will affect a number of application or annual charges for permit and licensed activities that farmers undertake.

Some fees are excluded from the changes, but this does affect:

  • abstraction licence application fees (9.5 %) and annual fees (10 %)
  • poultry permitting annual fees (11.5 %)
  • flood risk activity application and annual fees (7.5 %)
  • landspreading of sheep dip application (9 %) and annual fees (11 %)
  • and biowaste (composting and AD) annual fees (14 %).
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16 April 2025

Environment Agency opens consultation

The Environment Agency has said that, due to increases in the costs of delivering its services and inflationary pressures, it has reviewed its regulatory charges and is proposing an increase to these.聽

The is due to close on 28 May.聽

皇家华人is reviewing the proposals in detail and will be seeking feedback from members by 14 May to inform its response.

Cost hike adds pressure

Responding to the news, NFU Vice President Rachel Hallos said: 鈥淕iven the many other pressures and challenges in the farming sector, farm businesses are not in a position to absorb higher costs in the way of these proposed increases to Environment Agency charges.

鈥淭he level of charge increases proposed will not only add to the financial burden, but also potentially disincentivise growth and investment in environmental improvements.鈥�

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