Principles behind the UCF

The UCF will provide a long-term strategic solution to charging based on a number of common principles. It is intended to provide a common approach, leading to simplified and harmonised charges that will, in time, replace many of our different schemes.

The UCF has at its core a number of key principles. It should:

• reflect our Modern Regulation Programme
• be capable of being applied to most, if not all of our regulatory regimes
• be as simple to administer as possible and therefore support the Better Regulation programme
• provide full cost recovery
• be cost reflective (so charges reflect the level of our costs as closely as is practical)
• recognise and reward good environmental performance and discourage and penalise poor performance
• be proportionate to the environmental risk being regulated, linking to Opra principles.

The proposed UCF is being developed based on the above principles. In particular it is being developed by matching the Modern Regulation framework of three types of permits and the three regulatory tiers for compliance assessment, against three charging tiers. The three charging tiers are then linked to the relative risks identified through the three tiered Opra system to provide a risk-based element to the charges.

For more information please read the Consultation on the Principles of a Unified Charging Framework which we ran from January to April 2007.