{
  "url": "https://openlegislation.uk/draft-environmental-protection-wet-wipes-containing-plastic-england-regulations-2025/note",
  "json_url": "https://openlegislation.uk/draft-environmental-protection-wet-wipes-containing-plastic-england-regulations-2025/note.json",
  "legislation": "ukdsi/2025/9780348274974",
  "legislation_title": "The Environmental Protection (Wet Wipes Containing Plastic) (England) Regulations 2025",
  "legislation_url": "https://openlegislation.uk/draft-environmental-protection-wet-wipes-containing-plastic-england-regulations-2025",
  "path": "note",
  "kind": "note",
  "number": null,
  "heading": "Explanatory note",
  "text": "(This note is not part of the Regulations)\nThese Regulations, which apply in relation to England, prohibit persons from supplying or offering to supply wet wipes containing plastic (see definitions in regulation 2).\nPart 2 prohibits the supply of wet wipes containing plastic subject to certain exemptions (regulations 5 to 7). The exemptions include the supply of wet wipes containing plastic by registered pharmacies, supply for medical purposes, supply to businesses, or supply to local authorities. Breach of the prohibition is an offence (regulation 3). It is a defence for a person to show that they took all reasonable steps and exercised all due diligence to avoid committing the offence (regulation 8).\nA civil sanctions regime enables regulators to impose a range of civil sanctions (regulation 10 and the Schedule). These are fixed monetary penalties, compliance notices, stop notices and enforcement undertakings. These Regulations make provision for the procedure relating to these sanctions and the available appeal mechanisms. Failure to comply with a stop notice is an offence (paragraph 16 of the Schedule). All appeals relating to a civil sanction are to the First-tier Tribunal.\nRegulations 9 and 11 provide for enforcement officers to have powers of entry to carry out the necessary investigation in order to determine whether an offence has been committed.\nRegulation 12 provides for the publication of information on enforcement action taken by regulators. Regulation 13 makes provision on guidance relating to the use of civil sanctions and specifies the information to be included in such guidance. Regulation 14 contains provision for review of the Regulations.\nRegulators are able to recover the costs of enforcement (paragraph 27 of the Schedule) in the case of compliance notices and stop notices and must issue guidance about their use of enforcement cost recovery notices.\nA full impact assessment of the effect that these Regulations will have on the costs of business and the voluntary sectors is available from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF, and published alongside these Regulations and its Explanatory Memorandum at www.legislation.gov.uk.",
  "extent": null,
  "status": null,
  "version": "current",
  "annotations": [],
  "outstanding_effects": [],
  "provenance": {
    "source": "legislation.gov.uk",
    "source_url": "https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukdsi/2025/9780348274974/note",
    "retrieved_at": "2026-10-30T14:38:41.790902+00:00"
  },
  "licence": "Open Government Licence v3.0",
  "licence_url": "https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/",
  "attribution": "Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives."
}