A producer compliance scheme (PCS) is a membership organisation. The members are producers of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE).

A PCS is responsible for registering all its members every year and must:

• ensure it meets its financial obligations under the WEEE regulations
• fulfil its data reporting obligations

Apply to become a WEEE PCS

You must apply for approval from the appropriate environmental regulator. This depends on where your company has its registered office or principal place of business. They are the:

• Environment Agency – England
• Scottish Environmental Protection Agency – Scotland
• Natural Resources Wales – Wales
• Northern Ireland Environment Agency – Northern Ireland

You must apply between 1 July and 31 August in the year before the first year you want to start work as a PCS.

You must complete an application form and send your fee with your application. Contact your environmental regulator to request a form.

Charges

AllThe application charge is £12,150. This is a one off payment.

Annual charges for schemes approved by the Environment Agency

In England a PCS must pay:

• a set annual chargesproducer relatingcharge toof £12,500 for operating a compliance scheme
• an additional annual charge based on the WEEEnumber regimeand aretype of members

Charge set out1

The charges for scheme members whose registered office (or the scheme member’s principal place of business if they do not have a registered office) is in PartEngland 2or outside the UK are:

• £750 – producers which are none of Wastethe (Miscellaneous)below
• £100 (England)– Chargingproducers Schemewho 2018.are not small and not VAT registered*
• £100 – producers based outside the UK, who are not small and not VAT registered*
• £375 – scheme members based outside the UK, who are not small and are VAT registered
• £30 – scheme members who are small producers - put less than 5 tonnes of EEE on the market each year

*not VAT registered also implies not being required to register for VAT

An English compliance scheme pays the charges in charge set 2 for its members with a registered office (or principal place of business, if they do not have a registered office) in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Annual charges for schemes approved by SEPA, DAERA or NRW

Charge set 2

The charges are:

• £445 – producers with more than £1 million turnover
• £210 – producers with £1 million turnover or less and required to be VAT registered
• £30 – for producers not VAT registeredregistered*
• £30 – overseas company not VAT registeredregistered*
• £30 – for small producers placingputting less than 5 tonnes of EEE on the market each year

‘Not*not VAT registered’registered also implies not being required to register for VAT

Compliance schemes in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland pay the charges in charge set 1 if they have members with a registered office in England.

For the 2019 compliance year the annual producer charge is payable upon receipt of an invoice from your approving appropriate authority. Where a higher charge is payable because a member has a registered office in England, this will be invoiced by the Environment Agency. SEPA approved schemes will be invoiced by the Environment Agency for the difference between the fees. For example, a SEPA scheme with a member registered in England will be invoiced £445 by SEPA and £305 by the Environment Agency. This makes a total fee of £750.

Public register of approved PCSs

Once you’ve been approved to operate as a PCS, your scheme will appear on a public register showing:

• your business or trading name
• your registered office or main place of business
• whether your PCS is for household or non-household WEEE or both

WEEE PCS: your duties

Register your members

Every year you must register all your members with your approving environmental regulator.

You must do this before 30 November of the preceding year. If a producer joins your scheme part-way through the year, you must register that producer within 28 days. You cannot remove a member during a compliance year.

Contact your environmental regulator if you have any questions about your XML file.

Finance your members’ household WEEE obligations

You are responsible for financing part of the overall household (also known as business to consumer – B2C) WEEE collection target based on the market share of your members. Your overall target is split between each of the categories of EEE your members placed on the UK market in the previous year.

You must obtain sufficient evidence notes to show you’ve met these targets. Only approved authorised treatment facilities (AATFs) and approved exporters (AEs) that you have arrangements with can issue you evidence notesnotes. to you. An online serviceplatform called WEEE Online is used by AATFs, AEs and PCSs to do this. See WEEE evidence and national protocols for detailed guidance and access to the system.

See the list of approved AATFs and AEs in:

• England
• Scotland
• Northern Ireland
• Wales

Targets and target adjustments

The government sets the collection target for each compliance year. Your environmental regulator will calculate and give you your targets by 31 March each year.

Targets will be adjusted during the compliance year if scheme members:

• stop trading (for example, if they go bankrupt)
• register late so the PCS has to resubmit data

Where you do not have enough direct collection contracts to meet your target, you may contract collection to another PCS to collect on your behalf.

Compliance fee

You may be able to pay a compliance fee. The government may approve one compliance fee methodology and an administrator to run it but is under no obligation to set a fee in any given compliance year. Anyone, including a PCS can propose a methodology and an organisation to administer it by 30 September each year. Email your proposal to Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs at weee@defra.gov.uk.

If a compliance fee is set and you choose to use the fee as part (oror all)all of your compliance, you must provide evidence of payment. It’s part of your declaration of compliance that you submit to the environmental regulator.

Finance your members’ non-household WEEE obligations

There is no target for non-household (also known as business to business - B2B) WEEE. Schemes must finance the non-household WEEE their members are responsible for unless a member takes on that responsibility itself. This is waste from:

• EEE put on the market by their members on or after 13 August 2005
• any EEE put on the market before 13 August 2005 where the user is replacing with ‘like for like’ EEE from one of their members

The end user contacts the producer or PCS to ensure this WEEE is collected and sent either for recycling or reuse. You do not need to finance the cost of transport from the end user.

If you have an arrangement with your members that they finance their own non-household WEEE responsibilities, you will still need evidence notes to show the WEEE treatment has been financed.

You do not need to receive evidence where there is an agreement between the member and the end user that the end user will take responsibility for the WEEE. Where this is the case your member needs proof of the transfer of responsibility.

Prioritise recycling whole appliances for reuse

You may have your approval refused or withdrawn if you cannot show how you do this.

Collect WEEE

To obtain evidence notes you will need to make arrangements to collect WEEE or have WEEE collected on your behalf.

Household WEEE is generally collected at a designated collection facility (DCF) - most are run by local authorities or retailers. You can make an arrangement with a local authority DCF (or with a privately operated DCF) to collect their WEEE. You do not need to finance the cost of transport of this WEEE from the householder or business end user.

See the list of local authority DCFs and the name of the PCS they’re registered with.

If a local authority DCF site operatoroperator, (who’swho’s not managing its own WEEE and its PCS/DCF contract(s) has expired or terminated)terminated, asks you to clear any separately collected WEEE, you must arrange to collect and treat it even if you’ve reached your collection target. You can ask for proof of the expired or terminated contract to validate the request. You can also refer each request to the PCS balancing system (PBS) which will arrange to collect the WEEE and share the costs between all its members.

Household WEEE is also collected by retailers who’ve taken back WEEE from their customers or by other organisations with household WEEE (such as repairers). You must have systems in place to accept this WEEE unless your scheme only operates in the B2Bbusiness to business sector. You do not need to pay for the cost of transport of this WEEE to your nominated collection point (typically an AATF).

PCSs can set up other collection systems that are consistent with the 2013 WEEE Regulations 2013 (as amended).

To get evidence issued you must arrange for the WEEE to be treated, recovered, recycled or reused at an AATF or send it to an AE for export of whole appliances for reuse.

Evidence issued on non-household WEEE cannot be used to meet your household WEEE collection target.

See the guidance on how to correctly identify B2Cbusiness to consumer (B2C) and B2B business to business (B2B) EEE and  and WEEE.

Join the PCS balancing system (PBS)

You must join the PBSPCS balancing system within 30 days of it being approved by the Secretary of State. The approved PBS will ensure that any regulation 34 requests by a PCS operator are dealt with quickly and that the costs and evidence are shared between all the PBS members on a market share basis.

Anyone can submit a proposal for the PBS. You must submit your proposals for the PBS to Defra by 1 March 2019 to be considered for approval.

Read the guidance on submitting proposals for the Producer Compliance Scheme (PCS) Balancing System.

Standards you must meet

You must meet the requirements in the code of practice when you collect WEEE from DCFs.

Separately collected WEEE must be stored and treated using best available treatment, recovery and recycling techniques (BATRRT).

Send reports to your approving environmental regulator

You must report every 3 months the amount of:

• WEEE in each of the categories you’ve collected from the DCF, retailers and other organisations
• WEEE in each of the categories you’ve delivered to AATF and AE – specify household or non-household
• household EEE placedput on the market by category for each of your members

Every 3 months, you must also provide a breakdown of how much of the total amount comprises EEE originating from non-UK suppliers, for each of your members that is an online marketplace (OMP) producer and producer of their own EEE.

The environmental regulator must receive the report for:

• quarter 1 (January, February, March) by 30 April
• quarter 2 (April, May, June) by 31 July
• quarter 3 (July, August, September) by 31 October
• quarter 4 (October, November, December) by 31 January

You must report annually (in quarter 4) the amount of non-household EEE placedput on the market by category for each of your members.