The Extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme has been deferred for a year until October 2025.
The UK government has stated that following engagement with industry, and in light of the pressure facing consumers and businesses in the current economic context, new rules to ensure packaging producers pay for the cost of recycling their packaging will be deferred a year from October 2024 to 2025.
The Government will use the additional year to continue to discuss the scheme’s design with industry and reduce the costs of implementation wherever possible. In anticipation of EPR, producers have already started to use less packaging and adopt easier-to-recycle packaging formats, and they expect this process to continue – ensuring that costs are not then passed onto households later on.
This decision to defer producer payments has been taken jointly with the devolved administrations and will provide industry, local authorities, and waste management companies with more time to prepare to ensure the success of the scheme, helping make sure it is best designed to deliver on long term recycling goals while supporting households with the immediate challenge of high prices caused by inflation.
See: Update on packaging reforms to help drive down inflation - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Unregulated Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) agreements will fall under full FCA regulation from 15 July 2026. For the first time, BNPL lenders will need to meet the same expectations as other consumer-credit providers. With almost 11 million UK adults using BNPL in 2024, according to an FCA survey, this is a significant change.
The government has published the draft secondary legislation for the UK’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which is due to go live on 1 January 2027. This is an important development for UK businesses importing affected materials.