Industry officials are preparing to meet with the Under Secretary of State for Environment and Rural Affairs to debate new fees for workshops with waste oil incineration burners.

Independent Garage Association director Stuart James and Garage Equipment Association chief executive Dave Garratt will meet Rory Stewart in early March to discuss their concerns surrounding changes to the guidance for the Environmental Permitting (England & Wales) Regulations 2010.

The changes remove an exemption from the Waste Incineration Directive for Small Waste Oil Burners (SWOBS), requiring users to hold a new permit which carries a £3,218 application and annual fees of £1,384 in future.

There will also be new monitoring requirements that are expected to further increase costs.

Both James and Garratt believe that that the impact analysis which was carried out did not reflect the current economic model of waste oil collection given the recent dramatic falls in the value of oil.

James said: “The revisions to guidance will make it uneconomical to use a SWOB for the purpose it was intended as it significantly increases the costs for small garages. This will inevitably be passed on to consumers through higher labour rates.”

Garratt added, “We do not believe that it is appropriate and proportional to treat a 0.05Mw SWOB in the same way as a 50Mw industrial process.

“The revised guidance takes no account of the high levels of technology in modern SWOBs which make it far better for the environment to burn waste oil on site than to store and transport it by road to an industrial incinerator.”