Members of the waste and engineering sectors have submitted contrasting responses to a consultation from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on repealing the Site Waste Management Plan (SWMP) regulations.

The consultation, which opened last month and closed today (16 July), sought to ‘understand all likely consequences’ of removing the legal requirement for construction projects in England (costing more than £300,000) to have in place an SWMP for the ‘effective management of materials’.

SWMP regulations background

Introduced in 2008, the SWMP regulation was brought in to help reduce the amount of waste produced by construction projects, as it was found that plans ‘identified good and best practice opportunities to drive down waste and potentially reduce costs’.

However, Defra said that following analysis and stakeholder meetings as part of the government's Red Tape Challenge to remove unnecessary legislation and ‘free-up business’, the Site Waste Management Plans regulations were found to be ‘not fit for purpose’, and should on that basis be repealed, ‘subject to further consultation’.

The move comes in opposition to Wales’s stance on the matter, as the Welsh Government’s Construction and Demolition sector plan, launched in November, suggested introducing mandatory SWMPs to help those involved in the industry – including builders, trades people and suppliers – to improve waste management practices and gain more environmentally-friendly and affordable results.

Arguments against a repeal

Speaking in favour of the of SWMP regulation, the Environmental Services Association (ESA) – which represents around half of the UK’s materials recovery facility operators – said that removing the legal requirement may result in the loss of ‘control and traceability’ of waste materials.

ESA’s Head of Regulation Sam Corp said: “ESA regrets the proposed repeal of the SWMP regulations, which have played a useful role in helping the construction industry to reduce waste at no or little cost.

“Whilst we understand some of the arguments for repealing in terms of reducing administrative burden, we do consider that the SWMP have helped highlight the need to consider the resource efficiency and the waste hierarchy when managing waste from construction projects. We also consider that SWMPs introduced a level of control and traceability over how waste materials are managed which may be lost if the regulations are repealed.”

Corp went on to add that it “seemed inconsistent” that Defra should be considering removing the requirement, when the Welsh Government found SWMPs to bring a number of benefits including “improving recycling in the construction and demolition sector and addressing the numbers of illegal waste sites”.

Arguments for the repeal

However, engineering consultancy WSP has said it “fully supports proposals to scrap the ‘onerous regulations’”.

According to WSP, the high costs of building materials and waste disposal ‘are driving construction firms to plan carefully anyway, regardless of it being a legal requirement’. Further, the consultancy said that whilst SWMPs are a legal requirement, it was ‘not aware’ of a case where action had been taken against non-conformers’.

Michael Berney, Senior Consultant at WSP, said: “Many of our clients have been producing comprehensive SWMPs not just because they’re legally required to, but because they consider it to be a key part of running their projects well.

“Originally SWMPs were implemented to prevent waste crimes through the recording of waste leaving a site, but these days, with registered waste carriers and the use of waste transfer notes, they are no longer necessary.”

Berney added that rather than having “a regulation which isn’t then enforced”, governments should “provide more financial incentives to promote waste prevention, minimisation and recycling, highlight good practice, and help the poor performers understand that it’s all about good business, not box ticking”.

Read more about the relevance of Site Waste Management Plans in Resource 73.