Best Practice Scheme proposals – comments on draft documents needed by 23 June

As we have set out previously, ADBA will be piloting the Best Practice Scheme for AD this summer. The scheme, which is led by ADBA and supported by a wide range of industry stakeholders, is aimed at helping the industry to reach high standards of operation, including in environmental protection and health and safety. The certification scheme will allow operators to have their plant certified as meeting best practice as set out in the scheme documents, which are being developed through collaboration and consultation. We are working hard to ensure that operators who participate when the scheme is up and running will benefit from reduced Environment Agency subsistence fees and lower insurance costs.

It is important to note that the pilot this summer will be designed to further test the scheme criteria with a range of operators and it may therefore result in changes to the scheme documents.

At this stage, we need as much feedback from our members as possible – we can then address this feedback to make sure the scheme works for the industry as well as achieving its objectives.

How to provide feedback

Please provide comments by end of Friday 23rd June. After this, we will be preparing the documents for the start of the pilot in July. Comments can be provided by email to me at Jessica.Allan@adbioresources.org or give me a call on 020 3735 8380 and I will be happy to discuss.

What documents are available for review?

Both of the documents available for review are in draft form and are works in progress with some remaining aspects to finalise. They have been written through collaboration with our Best Practice Scheme steering group, with input from regulators and a small number of industry representatives. Note that much of the content has been derived from our three checklist guides which were published last year and that were also developed through industry consultation.

The two documents available that we are seeking feedback on are (click on the documents to download the word documents):

• Scheme Rules
• Scheme Criteria

These two documents will be a core part of the scheme. Whatever your role in our industry, we want to hear your thoughts about them – your expert knowledge will help make these documents robust and make sure they will work for our industry. Feedback from our members and others will allow us to refine the documents and put us in the best position going into our pilot.

Key areas for feedback

We welcome all feedback on the documents – no matter how general or specific! Every comment will be considered when we review feedback.

Feel free to download the documents and send back tracked-changes or comments.

We are also particularly interested in the following more general questions:

• Do you think the proposed certification process is reasonable?
• Do you have any objections to the proposed process? If so, please provide justification.
• Do you have any objections to any proposed criteria? If so, please provide justification.
• Do you think it is reasonable to allow a small number of non-conformances of ‘lower-risk’ criteria?
• Are there any criteria which you think will be prohibitive for lots of operators?
• Do you consider that there should be exceptions for some criteria for certain plants or in certain circumstances? In the Scheme Criteria document there is a column titled ‘Any exceptions’ – please indicate any you consider are appropriate and provide us with an explanation why.

There are also specific questions or points for feedback within the documents themselves which you can answer in the documents and send back to me.

What’s next?

Once we collate your feedback and make necessary amendments, we will be ready to pilot the scheme in summer this year.

We are currently finalising our plans for this pilot. At UK AD & Biogas 2017, the pilot plans will be confirmed and shared with all, so please do come along to the session – it will be in the Purple Seminar at 11:00 on 5th July.