Plant Health News issue 43 - June 2021
Updated 23 April 2024
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1. Inflationary change to forestry export phytosanitary certificate and forestry plant passporting inspection fees
1.1 Introduction
Amendments are being made to forestry fees legislation to change the level of the fees for issuing export phytosanitary certificates and for carrying out inspections in connection with plant passporting for forestry material. The changes will apply to the fees for these services in England from 15 July 2021. They make an inflationary adjustment to the cost of providing those services since the fees came into effect in 2004 and 2006, respectively.
The income received by the Forestry Commission will go some way to offsetting the cost of delivering export certification and plant passporting inspections. It will not achieve full recovery of the cost of providing these services.
All export phytosanitary certificate applications and associated inspections received on or after 15 July 2021 will be charged at the new higher rate. Additionally, all plant passport inspections performed on or after 15 July 2021 will be charged at the new rate.
1.2 Legislation
In England, Scotland and Wales, the fees for plant health forestry services are set out in the Plant Health (Fees) (Forestry) (England and Scotland) Regulations 2015 (S.I. 2015/350) and the Plant Health (Fees) (Forestry) (Wales) Regulations 2019.
At the present time, the same rate of fees apply across Great Britain for export phytosanitary certificates and for carrying out Professional Operator inspections. The revised fees will take effect in England. Wales is making parallel legislation and Scotland is considering making similar changes to have effect on their fees.
The changes which will take effect in England only are outlined in the table below:
| Service | Current fee (£) | Revised feed (£) | % change |
| Consideration of an application, including the issue of a phytosanitary certificate | 15.00 | 21.00 | 40 |
| Examination or testing of goods - up to first hour | 27.00 | 37.80 | 40 |
| Examination or testing of goods - for each additional 15 mins | 7.50 | 10.50 | 40 |
| Inspections in connection with a plant passport authority - up to first hour | 37.00 | 49.50 | 34 |
| Inspections in connection with a plant passport authority - for each additional 15 mins | 9.25 | 12.38 | 34 |
If your business is moving regulated wood and bark products from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, charges for inspecting and certifying goods will continue to be covered by the UK Government’s Movement Assistance Scheme.
The Statutory Instrument that relates to this change is available on legislation.gov.