The most recent meeting of the Business Reference Panel (BRP) organised by the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) from the UK government’s Department for Business and Trade (DBT) was held at its current headquarters at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington.
As usual it was chaired by Mike Kearney, Head of Business Engagement for the OPSS, who as part of his introduction mentioned that his colleague, Sue Bide, was unable to attend today because she was in Parliament today with the new Product Regulation and Metrology Bill being taken through the final report stage ready for its third reading.
In fact, later that very day, MPs in the House of Commons voted to approve the Third Reading of the Bill, and it was passed with agreed amendments. Because the Bill started in the House of Lords it will return to the Lords for consideration of the amendments the Commons has made. This process, known as ‘ping pong’, is when the Bill is sent back and forth between the two Houses to resolve any disagreements about the final text. Both Houses need to agree on the wording of the Bill before it can gain Royal Assent, which it is hoped will happen before the parliamentary Summer Recess at the end of July. It is expected that further progress will require statutory consultation and so will require input from BRP members. Information on the Bill’s progress can be found here.
Mike then introduced Sarah Smith, Deputy CEO for Regulation at the OPSS/DBT, who gave an update on recent developments for OPSS. She mentioned that OPSS had recently set up an Advisory Board with experts from industry and academia providing technical, business and legal support to the OPSS management team. The first board meeting had taken place earlier that week.
She also mentioned that the work of OPSS had been recently re-organised into 16 sectoral groups to concentrate on specific areas of interest without creating silos and losing an over-arching focus.
As part of this she mentioned a “mini” virtual BRP meeting being organised to showcase a new ‘FBR’ service being launched, initially focusing on the construction sector. It is an online service that brings together regulatory documents (guidance, standards, codes of conduct) and legislation into one platform, allowing searching and filtering of the content with a front-end, and an API for bulk data uses. It will be worth monitoring this as information more relevant to IABM membership is added.
Gillian McEneff, Head of OPSS Testing Laboratories, then spoke about the internal capabilities of the OPSS onsite there at Teddington and some of its current work being undertaken.
There followed some discussions on the work of DEFRA’s Circular Economy Taskforce. The new Government committed in its manifesto to reducing waste by moving to a circular economy and to map that transition, the Government plans to publish a Circular Economy Strategy. The Strategy will set out:
the Government’s vision for a circular economy;
potential new targets to galvanise action across the economy;
the approach to economy-wide enablers to drive investment into circular business models and critical infrastructure, stimulate behaviour change, and encourage innovation;
collaborative delivery with local places, academia, industry, investors and civil society.
It will also produce sector-based roadmaps that set out the interventions the Government will make in each of the following sectors:
agrifood, built environment, textiles, transport, chemicals & plastics, and electricals & electronic equipment.
The Circular Economy Strategy will be England only in scope initially (aside from policy areas that are reserved competence, e.g. waste exports), but it will be actively looking for opportunities to work collaboratively and closely across the UK.
The aspects covering electrical/electronic equipment and sustainable manufacturing will perhaps be of most interest to IABM members. It was noted that the UK is the world’s second largest generator of waste electrical/electronic equipment (WEEE) which the government admits is a shameful statistic but sees this as an opportunity for international leadership in managing this as it is the world’s largest growing waste stream.
In presented material on WEEE that was deemed not suitable yet for publication (the full strategy is still a work in progress and the aim is to publish for consultation in Autumn 2025) members of the taskforce team referred to a few concerning statistics:
- £1bn of lost materials due to hoarding, disposal, theft and illegal exports
- £147m worth of lost high technology materials including critical minerals for renewable energy and defence industries
- 100,000 tonnes of WEEE disposed of incorrectly
- 880m hoarded EEE items
- 1200 fires per annum due to batteries in WEEE disposed of in residual waste
- Non-compliance by overseas sellers, especially by vape suppliers
The team is exploring a number of potential interventions to tackle these issues.
1. Increasing re-use and repair of EEE
a. Possibly requiring producer-financed collection of WEEE from re-use charities
b. Research to quantify existing levels of re-use and to identify barriers and challenges to re-use
c. A campaign on re-use and repair including advice on data-wiping products
d. Improving right to repair, for example looking at repair voucher schemes in use internationally to see how a UK-based scheme might work and be effective
e. Looking at incentives for leasing
2. Strengthening eco-design and sustainable products regulations
a. Potentially including Digital Product Passports, improving public procurement practises and restricting the destruction of unsold stock
b. Reducing WEEE disposed of in landfill or incinerated, retaining material value to increase feedstock for recycling. Thereby incentivising development of suitable technologies at both design and waste disposal stages
c. Consider EU alignment of regulations to improve efficiency, reduce business burdens and promote economic growth
3. Reviewing the objectives of the existing EEE Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) regulations
a. How to drive up collection rates for re-use and recycling, and to incentivise companies to adopt circular economy business models
b. How to encourage investment in reprocessing infrastructure in the UK for recyclable materials
c. How to create collection targets that are ambitious but still achievable within the regulatory framework
d. How to encourage public engagement
4. Forecasting future reprocessing requirements
a. Gathering detail of the existing 14 categories of EEE (potentially adding vapes as a new category 15) and developing a more targeted circular economy solution matrix of required actions
b. Review the right to repair requirements to hold stocks of spare parts which may then be disposed to landfill if never used
5. Consideration of longer-term measures
a. Increasing material recovery by reviewing and amending existing recovery and recycling efficiency rates and researching scope for (and determining necessary incentives for) commercialising recovery of critical raw materials
b. Driving better designed products – potentially including alignment with EU Eco-design regulations, whilst recognising the UK’s position within a sector dominated by global manufacturing and supply chains.
It is expected and intended that the published circular economy strategy later this year will be a ‘living document’ requiring regular updates with at least a 25-year window for forecasting purposes.
Rebecca Hall from the DBT Regulation Directorate, then presented on an ‘Action Plan for Regulation for Growth’ and referenced a document published in March this year. Work has started via a baselining exercise to understand the administrative costs of regulation to businesses. This exercise has not been done for 15 years, the government says, and the aim is to reduce the administrative costs of regulation by 25%.
Finally, we had a presentation on Trade Digitalisation. This builds on the Electronic Trade Documents Act 2023 and other related international regulations, agreements and protocols. This might, tangentially, provide a means to keep track of changing trade tariffs too.
