The Environment Agency Issues Regulatory Position Statement

Standard Industrial Classification and the Hazardous Waste Regulations – A Regulatory Position Statement from the Environment Agency

The Environment Agency has recently issued a regulatory position statement to clarify the use of the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code on hazardous waste consignment notes.

Customers previously used the SIC from the 2003 publication and since the release of the 2007 SIC publication there appears some uncertainty as to which publication should be used on hazardous waste consignment notes. The answer is clear that you use the 2003 publication on consignment notes. The 2007 publication introduced on 28th September 2011 applied to Waste transfer notes (non hazardous waste transfers).
However, the Environment Agency state, that this position statement provides a relaxation to the use of the SIC code on the hazardous waste consignment note.

The Environment Agency will not pursue breaches of the requirement to include the SIC code on a hazardous waste consignment note. They will also not pursue any corrections of the SIC code if you insert the 2007 publication code as opposed to the 2003 code.

This position is taken as a common sense approach to removing any confusion as to which code to use on each note (Hazardous waste or waste transfer note). The best advice to offer is to insert the 2007 code on both notes if you are at all confused as to which publication to use.

This regulatory position will be reviewed by September 2012 when it should be clearer if the SIC 2007 publication will replace the 2003 publication for both waste streams.

Please note the Environment Agency will still require the SIC from the 2003 publication of codes to be provided when a hazardous waste producers premises registration is made on line, by telephone, electronically or on a paper form.