Types of licence fees
All licences attract annual administrative fees and some licences will also require payment of annual load-based fees.
The administrative fee is calculated according to the nature, size and/or capacity of the activity undertaken and, for those licences subject to risk based licensing, from the first anniversary for a licence, the environmental management performance of the licence holder.
For each activity classification, the levels of administrative fees are set out in Chapter 3 Part 1 of the Protection of the Environment Operations (General) Regulation 2022.
Licence administrative fees
Premises based and mobile waste processing activities
Licence administrative fees, for premised-based and mobile waste processing scheduled activities, are calculated based on the type of activities being undertaken (fee-based activities), the scale of these activities, and a licensee's environmental management category. The environmental management category is determined in accordance with the Environmental Management Calculation Protocol.
Multiple activities
Licensees with multiple activities only pay the single highest calculated activity fee, not a sum of all activity fees.
For detailed worked examples of calculations of fees that must accompany a licence application and annual administrative fee calculations, including those for licences with multiple activities, please refer to section 4 of the Guide To Licensing (PDF 747KB).
Waste transporting activities
Licence administrative fees for waste transport activities are calculated based on the nature, size and/or capacity of the activity undertaken.
Load-based fees
Load-based fees apply only to those activities that have assessable pollutants. Fees depend on the amount of assessable pollutants and the types of pollutants that an activity releases into the environment, as well as the conditions in the receiving environment.
Protection of the Environment Operations (General) Regulation 2009 lists all licensed activities and states whether those activities have assessable pollutants.
For more information on calculating load-based fees see Calculating pollutant load fees.
Timing of fee payments
The licence administrative fee is payable within 120 days of the start of the licence period.The load-based fee (made up of the pollutant load fees, less the prepaid administrative fee) is payable within 120 days of the end of the licence period.
Late payments
Late fee payments attract a penalty of 5% per fortnight on the amount outstanding.