Seòmar agus comataidhean

Douglas Lumsden has made it clear that he is not in favour of this, but the scheme administrator has the power to respond to a lot of his questions and to implement answers. I will leave it there.

I have nothing to add, convener.

Absolutely. The ECU is alive to the various milestones that developers want to meet—allocation round 7 for contracts for difference, for example, and the cap and floor that you have just mentioned—and it works closely with developers to ensure that it gets the right information to enable it to make determinations that allow them to meet those milestones.

I will certainly take away your wider point about the other bodies that need to have capacity and will add that to the agenda for my next meeting with SEPA.

First, I thank Sarah Boyack for highlighting the fact that local authorities will get increased access to funding. The current estimate is that there will be around £160 million a year for local authorities to support the collection of household packaging waste. The payments will start in November 2025. That is a significant boost to waste management in Scotland at local authority level. I said in the earlier session that one of the positive things about this is that, over time, local authorities will be able to divert a lot of their efforts in waste reduction and the recovery of materials into things that they may not formerly have had the scope or capacity to do.

The other aspect, of course, is the inevitable change that this will make to types of packaging. Packaging producers will be innovating in this space, and I am very hopeful that they will reduce the amount of packaging associated with household goods.

That is a really interesting question. Packaging producers and producers of household goods will be discussing how they can reduce the carbon footprint that is associated with their packaging. I cannot determine what is going to happen. It will happen in the private sector, where there will be innovation. EPR has been put in place because we have not seen enough reduction in the amounts or types of packaging. It will be exciting to see what our supermarkets look like after five to 10 years of implementation. Hopefully, they will look very different.

We are already seeing some of the packaging associated with household items changing in anticipation, with the use of cardboard over plastic and a reduction in overpackaging—that is certainly my experience as a consumer.

We have given SEPA powers to impose three different civil sanctions. It will not require any increase in capacity, because we are just giving it the powers to impose the sanctions: a fixed monetary penalty that is set at either £300, £600 or £1,000 depending on the nature of each offence and whether it has been designated as low, medium or high; and a variable monetary penalty that is equivalent to the maximum fine that could be imposed on a summary conviction, which is £10,000. We have given SEPA the powers and, in our discussions with it, we have not seen that any increase in capacity will be required. To my knowledge, SEPA has not made any ask of Government in that regard.

Haydn Thomas can try to answer that. I think that you can take it with you, and you can get the money back.

It does not matter where you buy the drink. If I bought a Diet Coke from Tesco, for example, and if the local convenience store in my village had a return point, I could take it back there and get my money back. I think that that would apply, wherever you bought your drink.

I have just been reminded by my officials that I should have mentioned that the registration fees associated with EPR will cover any costs that SEPA has for investigation, which may or may not lead to the issuing of these fixed-penalty notices. I should have clarified that, of course, there is a cost associated with that, but it will be covered by the registration fees.

Scotland’s environmental regulator has a number of functions. We have made sure that its resource positions it to lead on the new duties that are associated with EPR. We have just introduced fixed-penalty notices for single-use items as well, so it is at local authority level as well. Some of the issues that Mark Ruskell mentioned to do with the types of materials that are used for things such as takeaway items are for the local authority level rather than SEPA. This is for the regulator to deal with those that are registered as part of EPR.

A number of things are happening at local authority level. I understand that but, of course, if people are using materials that they should not be using, it is for the local authority to investigate.

You always pay a premium for drinks when you are seated in a cafe or pub, but if you want to hang on to your can in order to get your money back, you are perfectly within your rights to do so. Haydn, is there anything to add?

It is a sign that years of lobbying by the Scottish Government and a succession of ministers seeking to mandate community engagement before an application goes in has worked. It is actually the opposite of what Douglas Lumsden is asserting. We have heard very loud and clear that communities do not feel that they are listened to by developers and that there is no compulsion on developers to engage with communities. There are developers who voluntarily engage with communities and who have signed up voluntarily to the good practice principles that we have put in place in Scotland, but there are others who, by law, are allowed not to bother to engage with communities. The change means that there is a material difference. Following the lobbying that we have done with the UK Government, Scottish ministers will be given legal powers to demand that developers engage with communities before an application goes in.

At present, there is no statutory requirement for notification, publicity, consultation or proposals before an application is made. There are no detailed requirements that applicants must adhere to in the making of applications to the determining authority, and no validation procedure. These regulation-making powers will allow for requirements regarding the pre-application steps of mandatory notification to prescribed persons, publicity requirements and consultation obligations. They create an acceptance stage during which Scottish ministers must assess an applicant’s compliance with the regulatory requirements before deciding to proceed with the application. They also enable fee charges for applications.

That empowers communities: by law, they must be engaged with by the applicant. It is a wholesale strengthening of communities’ views in the determination of an application—

This is an indication that the voices of communities have been heard loud and clear. The Scottish Government would not have lobbied for years and years for these regulation-making powers to make community engagement mandatory ahead of an application if it was not for community groups saying that they were dissatisfied—