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

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the guidance issued on 29 December 2022 by the Environment Agency on the disposal of Waste Upholstered Domestic Seating (WUDS) containing Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), why this legislation was not issued with more notice, given that it affects all councils that collect bulky upholstered domestic waste; what assessment they made of the amount of time that local councils and their Household Recycling Centres would need to make alternative arrangements for such items with their waste disposal partners; and what measures they have put in place to ensure that there is no increase in public fly-tipping and illegal dumping of bulky domestic waste items as a result.

The Environment Agency (EA) is working to tackle the illegal disposal of waste domestic seating containing large quantities of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). Guidance on how to comply with this legislation was published on GOV.UK when this legislation was introduced in 2016 and 2019 explaining the core requirements that apply to any waste containing POPs. Additional guidance was developed, with stakeholders, in winter 2021 to help provide more practical advice and issued to local authorities and their contractors in August 2022 regarding waste domestic seating containing POPs. The guidance was further updated before publishing on GOV.UK on 19th December 2022. The EA will continue to maintain and update this guidance as needed.

The EA and Defra have been working with stakeholders, including local authority representatives, from early 2021, to help them prepare to comply and to understand where changes to waste management arrangements would be required and the impact this would have on local authorities and their contractors. Engagement continued through guidance development and technical resolver groups. The EA attended local authority meetings during the second half of 2022 and has worked with individual local authorities to support them as needed.

The EA has provided three Regulatory Positions designed to help local authorities dispose of this waste appropriately, published in December 2022.

A large minority of local authorities were already incinerating this waste, and our understanding is that many more are now successfully doing so. All waste disposal authorities have household waste recycling centres with environmental permits which permit this waste, and therefore residents should have an outlet to dispose of it. Fly tipping is an offence which all local authorities treat seriously.

The Government recognises that this is particularly challenging for some local authorities due to their geography and infrastructure. Local authorities and their contractors have a duty of care to understand the nature of the waste they are responsible for and to manage it appropriately. Officials are monitoring a number of risks, including a risk of increased fly-tipping of waste domestic seating. The EA will continue to support local authorities as they take action to comply.