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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to prepare for the roll out of the deposit return scheme in England in October 2025.

In January 2023, UK Government, Welsh Government, and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland published the government response to the 2021 consultation, setting out policy decisions and next steps for introducing the scheme. The immediate next step is to finalise the secondary legislation, which will set out the detailed obligations required to deliver the scheme, taking steps to ensure it will work in practice. The legislation then needs to go through the necessary clearances including WTO notification, before it can be laid in UK Parliament and the Welsh Senedd.

We will then be able to assess an application and appoint the Deposit Management Organisation (DMO) who will be responsible for running the scheme. Our intention is to have appointed the DMO by summer 2024.

Once the DMO is appointed, there is a period of time required for them to set up including establishing their governance, getting staff in place, securing set up finance and making initial decisions. It is only once these decisions have been made can industry finalise their part of rollout, which includes making labelling changes to products and rolling out reverse vending machines.

We want to ensure we have an ambitious yet realistic timeframe for delivery of the scheme. Government has set out that the DRS will start from 1 October 2025. We will continue to work with industry to assess the feasibility of this date as more detail is developed on the implementation phases of the scheme, including as part of the Deposit Management Organisation application process.