The National Clearing House (NCH) has been proposed by producers as an administrative body to assist in the registration of producers and the allocation of WEEE to producers. An NCH could act as a “one stop shop” for producers’ registration and data reporting in relation to their obligations.
Timetable/next steps
An NCH will need to be established to be ready to handle producers’ registration from the start of 2005. The Government expects this registration to take place in the first half of 2005.
This timetable represents a significant challenge. The Government expects the producer community, which has pressed strongly for the NCH, now to take a leading role in developing it.
The Government expects that the NCH operator would be required to:
- set up and administer the register of producers on behalf of the Government.
- maintain a list of designated collection facilities.
- recover registration fees from producers.
- operate arrangements for allocating WEEE to producers and/or their compliance schemes in proportion to their market share.
- collect specified data on behalf of the Government/Agencies
- report to the Agencies where a producer has failed to meet their obligations, e.g. to register, provide relevant data, collect allocated WEEE or meet recovery targets. The Agencies would then take enforcement action, as necessary.
In the event of the NCH not being ready to discharge its proposed role in relation to the allocation of WEEE to producers in time for the onset of producers’ obligations in August 2005, the Government reserves the right to implement other arrangements to ensure that producers and retailers meet their obligations for WEEE under the WEEE Regulations.
In view of concerns raised by many stakeholders that WEEE at designated collection facilities must be collected, the Government is considering whether to include a provision in the Regulations to allow it to direct producers or producer compliance schemes to arrange collection of separately collected WEEE from designated collection facilities.
Q. I’m a producer, may I comply “independently”?
A producer may comply individually or via a compliance scheme. If you are complying individually, you have to register with the NCH and report data to it to show your compliance. (If you are a scheme member, your scheme will do this for you).
You will then receive an allocation of WEEE from the NCH according to your market share.