These Regulations amend the Single Use Carrier Bags Charge (Wales) Regulations 2010. They are made under the Climate Change Act 2008, apply in relation to Wales and come into force on 1 October 2011.

The 2010 Regulations require sellers to charge a minimum price for singe use carrier bags. They impose record-keeping and reporting requirements on sellers, appoint local authorities to administer the charging scheme and confer civil sanctioning powers on local authorities to enforce the Regulations.

The principal amendments made to the 2010 Regulations by these Regulations are as follows.

Regulation 4 substitutes a new regulation 6 for the original. The effect of the change is to ensure that when a customer pays 5 pence for a single use carrier bag, the 5 pence includes VAT when paid to a seller who is registered for VAT.

Regulation 5 inserts a new regulation 7A into the 2010 Regulations. The new regulation disapplies the record-keeping and reporting requirements for a reporting year if a seller employs less than 10 full-time equivalent members of staff on the first day of that reporting year.

Regulation 6 substitutes a new regulation 8 for the original. One of the principal effects of the change is to require sellers to discount any amount above 5 pence that customers pay for single use carrier bags when sellers are reporting the net proceeds they have received from the charge.

The other principal effect of the change is to include costs incurred before 1 October 2011 in “reasonable costs”. The effect of this in turn will be that when sellers are reporting on the net proceeds they have received from the charge in the first year, that amount will not include any costs they have reasonably incurred in preparing for the introduction of the charge.

Regulation 7 substitutes a new regulation 13(1) for the original. The effect is to add two further circumstances in which a notice of intent to impose a fixed monetary penalty may not be served. Those circumstances are where the seller has previously made a discharge payment in relation to the same breach under the 2010 Regulations; or if a fixed penalty has previously been imposed in relation to the same act or omission.

Regulation 8 inserts a new paragraph 1(1)(za) into Schedule 1. This new paragraph brings together the original exemptions that were contained in paragraph 1(1)(a) to (d) and (o) of that Schedule and makes an amendment to how those exemptions work. The effect is that a single use carrier bag which is used to contain one or more of the items now listed in the new paragraph 1(1)(za) will be exempt from the charge; there is no longer a need for a bag to be used solely to contain one of those items in order to benefit from the exemption.

Regulation 8 removes the exemption for sealed bags supplied by a seller before the point of sale. Regulation 8 also substitutes a new paragraph 1(1)(i) for the original. The effect is to exempt mail order dispatch and courier bags from the requirement to charge.

The regulatory impact assessment prepared for the 2010 Regulations has been updated to include the impact arising from the disapplication of the reporting requirements to micro businesses. A copy of that impact assessment can be obtained from the Welsh Government, Cathays Park, Cardiff CF10 3NQ.