UK importers will receive refunds from Defra, after the department admitted this week it has been charging for plant-health checks without the necessary statutory basis.
Defra has even charged importers whose consignments were not inspected. The trade is left to wonder at the disarray of the whole charging issue and how it could possibly have been so badly handled.
The plant health division has written to those importers it believes are affected and clarified that it proposes to refund 68 per cent of charges raised between April 20, 2005 and August 4, 2006 in cases when no plant-health check was actually carried out.
“In carrying out a review of the import regime, we identified a significant shortfall in inspections as a result of delays to development of our IT systems,” Martin Ward, of the plant health division at Defra, said.
“The legislation in place at the time did not anticipate this and as a result, for some trades, we have made charges for plant-health checks when we did not have the necessary statutory basis. Importers whose consignments were not inspected are entitled to a refund.
“However, to avoid the difficulties inherent in identifying these consignments and to remedy this situation promptly and efficiently we are proposing to make a general refund of a proportion of the charges made in the affected trades.”
But the trade is extremely disappointed at the chaotic nature of the process. A delegation from the Fresh Produce Consortium was due to meet with civil servants from the plant health division this week.
“This goes back more than two years to when Defra failed to take the necessary action to implement EU plant-health regulation changes,” said FPC ceo Nigel Jenney. “This new legislation placed large volumes into the 100-per-cent-check category, for example citrus. We had a formal consultation and said that charging should not happen until electronic pre-notification systems were in place. But it did.”
The result is that Defra systems could not cope, enhancement to the PEACH computer system has not happened, and as a result Defra calculates that only about a third of due inspections have been carried out, while affected importers have been charged for 100 per cent.
Defra is offering the 68 per cent refund as calculating the precise amounts due would involve a lengthy and complicated investigation.
Industry insiders calculate that for the largest importers affected by this latest Defra fiasco, the amount that was erroneously charged during the period could run into tens of thousands of pounds.
The department’s incorrect charging is therefore likely to add up to several hundred thousand pounds across the entire trade. Many companies that feel they are entitled to more than the average payout may well not settle for the 68 per cent offered by Defra, which said assessment "may take some time".
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