Recent changes in Landfill tax, has meant confusion amongst many contractors in the construction industry. It would appear that they are being poorly advised, perhaps incurring unnecessary and expensive costs, when removing Japanese knotweed contaminated soils from site.
To summarise the situation, there are still two bands of landfill tax for Japanese knotweed soils. These are standard rate (currently £40/tonne) and incidental (currently £2.50/tonne). Wreford are still able to legally send soils contaminated with Japanese knotweed at the incidental rate (subject to certain criteria).
We keep on being told by hauliers, ground workers, etc that they have to take it as standard rate now, but when we’re involved, we can often get the tax (or 90% of it at least) to the incidental rate. As a further complication, the old 7 x 3m rule is still being cited by some people, even though this ceased to be good practice some years ago… this rule if adhered to could double the tonnage off site – and all at the standard rate of tax!
As a simple case study – if we’re involved on a minor excavation (say 300 tonnes) and remove this material to licensed landfill; we can save the client around £11,250.00 in landfill tax. This being the difference between standard and incidental tax. If we have also reduced the tonnage off site, the savings could be much larger!
So why not contact us and discuss this? Calling on the professionals could save you money and time!
