Scottish waste carriers and brokers are to benefit from a faster, streamlined online registration service launched by Scottish environmental regulator SEPA.
The new registration service will take approximately five minutes to complete and is a fully accessible customer friendly site with an instant cloud based secure payment service.
It replaces a temporary service that SEPA made available earlier this year following the cyber-attack carried out on the organisation.
If you transport waste or arrange to have it transported as part of your business, you must register with a regulator (SEPA for Scotland and the Environment Agency for England), even if you only deal with the transportation of waste occasionally. If you don’t register you could face a fine of up to £5,000 (Scotland).
Simon Pattullo, Product Owner in their Digital Licensing team at SEPA, said: “This new secure online registration system will bring huge benefits of improvements in speed, service and efficiency for customers. This benefits not only the customer but SEPA as well, as it frees up our staff from admin to focus on regulatory activity.
The digital registration service makes it easier to do business with SEPA and is a positive way we have been able to build back an improved system following the cyber-attack and provide customers with an optimum service
“As part of the registration process, customers will now have their registration certificate sent to them embedded in an email to make it more accessible when they are asked to display it.
“The digital registration service makes it easier to do business with SEPA and is a positive way we have been able to build back an improved system following the cyber-attack and provide customers with an optimum service.”
In addition, SEPA is developing the new digital service to allow customers to renew existing waste carrier and/or broker registrations which will go live by the end of October 2021.
Ray Parmenter, Head of Technical and Policy at the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) said: “CIWM welcomes this new initiative from SEPA and believes it will be of great value to resources and waste operators in Scotland by making it much quicker and easier to register exemptions and registrations.
“We hope those who may not currently be complying with the legal requirements to register will take the opportunity to do so using this new streamlined system.”
