United Kingdom packaging EPR fees 2026-27

The UK disposal fee rests on SI 2024/1332, the 2024 packaging producer responsibility regulations tracked as PR-GB-002. Regulation 60(1) makes a producer liable for an assessment year if, in the preceding calendar year, it acted as brand owner, packer/filler, importer or first UK owner, distributor, online marketplace operator or service provider, was a large producer, and supplied household packaging⁷. Regulation 24 draws the size line: more than £2,000,000 turnover and more than 50 tonnes supplied for the higher tier, and more than £1,000,000 and more than 25 tonnes for the lower tier⁸. Only the higher tier pays disposal fees; the lower tier registers and reports once a year⁹.

The scheme administrator is PackUK. Under regulation 60(2) and (3) it works out each liable producer's disposal fee and administration fee and sends a notice of liability⁷. The money reimburses local authorities for managing household packaging waste, net of what councils earn selling the material, plus PackUK's own running, public information and bad-debt costs². Year 1 (2025 to 2026) invoices totalled £1.46 billion, and the operational plan forecasts about £1.558 billion of fee recovery for year 2³.

Two things sit outside the fee. Registration charges paid to the four environment agencies and the cost of meeting recycling obligations, for example buying packaging waste recovery notes, are billed separately¹. Commercial and industrial packaging that never reaches a household bin carries no disposal fee under regulation 60, and from year 2 single-use PET, aluminium and steel drinks containers sized between 150 ml and 3 litres are taken out of the tonnage because the deposit schemes will handle them¹. HMRC levies Plastic Packaging Tax (PR-GB-001) on that same plastic as an entirely separate charge¹⁰.

PackUK sets one base fee per material by dividing net local authority cost for that material, plus its share of PackUK overheads, by household tonnage placed on the market¹². Year 1 base fees, published on 27 June 2025, were rounded to the nearest £1 for display, while invoices use the unrounded figures to four decimal places². Year 1 was not modulated, and in February 2026 PackUK confirmed those disposal fees would stand even though resubmitted data lowered reported tonnage; the UK government covered the resulting council funding gap as a one-off⁶.

Year 2 (2026 to 2027) is the first modulated year. The figures held on this page are the illustrative fees of 16 December 2025, updated 19 December 2025, rounded to the nearest £5; the plastic line reads £415 (green), £455 (amber) and £545 (red) a tonne, and those numbers remain illustrative, not confirmed¹. That document estimated tonnage from first-half 2025 data and recyclability ratings from returns covering only 45% of that tonnage¹. Under the operational plan as revised on 10 August 2026, PackUK runs the year 2 calculation in November 2026 and sends one notice of liability before that month closes³. For year 2, costs of littered and on-the-go packaging leave the numerator but the tonnage stays in the denominator¹.

SPI calculation on illustrative year 2 rates: the two disposal fee lines come to £108,700.00 and the tax line to £13,729.20, so the 460 tonnes of packaging cost £122,429.20¹¹⁰. The liners are 13% of the weight but 37.9% of the total, because film carries both the red multiplier and the tax.

At year 1 base fees (£196 paper, £423 plastic) the same disposal fee would have been £103,780.00, so the illustrative year 2 table adds £4,920.00². Moving the liner from red to amber would cut its line to £27,300.00, and a green rating to £24,900.00, a saving of £7,800.00 a year at these figures. None of these year 2 amounts is final until PackUK runs its November 2026 calculation³.

Data deadlines are set on GOV.UK by producer size, and payment dates come from each notice of liability⁵⁹. Plastic Packaging Tax runs on HMRC's own quarterly calendar¹².

This comparison sets year 1 final base fees against year 2 illustrative amber fees, so it compares a confirmed table with an estimate¹². On the rounded figures, amber fees rise for six of eight materials: wood by 60.7%, fibre-based composite by 13.9%, steel by 12.0%, plastic by 7.6%, paper and board by 7.1% and glass by 6.8%, while aluminium edges up 1.5% and other materials fall 13.1%. PackUK's own percentages, worked on unrounded fees, give about 1% for aluminium, 60% for wood and minus 15% for other¹.

PackUK attributes the moves to council cost inflation of 1.9% and lower reported tonnage, with wood hit by a large drop in declared tonnes partly because some material was reclassified¹. Plastic Packaging Tax moved on its own track, by 2.3%, reaching £228.82 a tonne (from £223.69) at the start of April 2026¹¹.