Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help tackle potential abuse of the Extended Producer Responsibility exemption threshold; and whether he has made an assessment of the impact of the £2 million turnover exemption on fair competition.

As the environmental regulator for England, the Environment Agency (EA) conducts compliance checks to ensure businesses accurately assess themselves against regulatory thresholds. These checks include, but are not limited to, open-source reviews of company accounts via the Companies House website and requests for evidence to verify reported turnover.

The Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging and Packaging Waste) Regulations 2024 provide for the assessment of turnover thresholds within corporate groups. Where such a group exists, the turnover of all companies performing a producer function must be aggregated to determine whether the £2 million threshold is met. This measure prevents businesses from establishing additional entities to remain below the threshold.

All EA producer compliance monitoring audits include a review of company structures to ensure that all relevant organisations within a corporate group comply with the regulations.

In October 2024, the Government published an updated impact assessment for the introduction of Extended Responsibility for Packaging (pEPR), this includes an analysis of the impact of pEPR on competition.