Deposit Return Schemes
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of operating different deposit return scheme frameworks in different parts of the UK on costs for (a) producers and (b) retailers.
Answered by Mary Creagh
A new organisation called UK Deposit Management Organisation Ltd (UK DMO) will run the scheme. It’s a not-for-profit group, led by businesses. They were officially appointed in May 2025 (England & NI) and June 2025 (Scotland).
The Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) across England, Northern Ireland and Scotland have been designed with interoperability in mind to ensure the schemes look and feel like one scheme in all three nations.
I and my officials remain in close working partnership with the Welsh Government as they develop further detail of their scheme, and it is reassuring that they have decided to align their scheme launch date with DRS in the rest of the UK.
Government will continue to work closely across the sector, and now with UK DMO, to ensure the smooth implementation of the DRS for businesses and consumers. We will also maintain regular engagement with retailers, producers and interested groups to monitor implementation progress.
Each nation has or will set out the costs of their schemes in their respective impact assessments. The full impact assessment for England and Northern Ireland was published when the regulations came into force in January of this year and can be found here.
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