Introduction to Health and Safety at Work

17.19.2 Summary
The list below is not exhaustive, but summarizes the 
main requirements. There is also a range of web links 
that will help to obtain more detail.
➤
From 16 July 2005, it is an offence for hazardous 
waste to be collected from a site that has not been 
registered or is exempt.
➤
All non-exempt sites that produce hazardous waste 
must be registered even if they are unlikely to have 
that waste collected for some time. Recent EA Guid-
ance has clarifi ed that it is an offence to produce 
hazardous waste on site and not be registered.
➤
The Regulations implement, through the List of 
Wastes (England) Regulations 2005, the European 
Waste Catalogue list of Hazardous wastes for the pur-
poses of collection. This can be found at www.hmso.
gov.uk and will mean that things like PC monitors, 
PC base units, fridges, TVs, oily rags and sep arately 
collected fl uorescent tubes require collection under 
the new hazardous waste notifi cation and docu 
-
mentation procedures.
➤
The EA will accept postal registrations and regis-
trations can be made on line through the following 
website www.environment-agency.gov.uk.
➤
Each site producing hazardous waste has to have 
a separate registration although multiple sites can 
be registered on the same notifi cation. Therefore, a 
head offi ce could register all its sites centrally, but 
each site would have a separate unique registration 
number and require a separate fee.
➤
Some sites are exempt if they expect to produce 
less than 200 
kgs of hazardous waste a year – 
although they would then have to register if, part 
way through the year, they went over the threshold. 
These include agricultural premises, offi ce premises, 
shops, premises where WEEE is collected, dental, 
veterinary and medical practices and ships. The EA 
indicate that 200 kgs is approximately 10 small TVs, 
500 fl uorescent tubes or 5 small domestic fridges.
➤
Domestic waste is excluded from the Hazardous 
Waste Regulations on collection from the domestic 
property, but is then subject to the Regulations if it 
is separately collected or if it consists of asbestos. 
This includes Prescription Only Medicines (other than 
cytotoxic and cytostatic medicines) which will be 
hazardous waste.
➤
The Regulations require a new consignment note 
to be used from 16 July 2005 in place of the former 
Section 62. Each consignment will require a fee 
to be paid to the EA by the consignee with their 
quarterly returns to the Agency. Clearly, this will be 
charged back to the collector, but a consignment 
might well attract more than one consignment fee if, 
for instance, it goes through a transfer station and 
the collector would have to ensure that this was con-
sidered in the price.
➤
Collection rounds will be possible but again, each 
site where the waste is collected would have to be 
left a copy of the consignment note, so the process 
of tracking and the paper trail will get quite complex 
especially as each collection will count as a con-
signment from the fee point of view.