We are pleased to publish our Annual Report, setting out the review of our performance against the targets set in our 2019-2022 Corporate Plan by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), which we fully met and delivered.
Since 1996, we have provided independent assurance to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) that landfill tax monies diverted to the Landfill Communities Fund (LCF) are spent compliantly in accordance with the Landfill Tax Regulations 1996 (Regulations). During this time the Landfill Communities Fund (LCF) has received £1.69 billion in deferred tax contributions from Landfill Operators (LOs) which has supported 4,047 Environmental Bodies (EBs) to deliver more than 60,000 local community or environmental projects.
As always, our Annual Report covers our activities across a full twelve month reporting period. However, during the final quarter of 2019/2020 our normal office based business model was (and continues to be) interrupted by the need to adapt to the unprecedented COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic.
At ENTRUST, our first priority was to ensure the health and well-being of our staff, stakeholders and their families and as a responsible organisation we acted proactively to take appropriate steps to ensure we could continue providing services to our stakeholders. In March 2020 we implemented our Business Continuity Plan (BCP), moving all staff, where possible, to home working. We believe that our innovative work, delivered between 2017 and 2020, to move to 100 per cent e-delivery of services enabled us to quickly and efficiently respond in an agile manner which has ensured that ENTRUST can still provide a 24/7 service for our stakeholders.
Throughout 2019/2020 we:
- Continued to work closely with all LCF stakeholders including the Association of Distributive and Environmental Bodies (ADEB), the Chairs of the largest EBs and LOs and HMRC;
- Maintained levels of satisfaction with our regulatory services at 86 per cent;
- Delivered all of our objectives and met all of HMRC's agreed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs);
- Introduced an innovative new framework to enhance our approach when registering projects considered high risk, by implementing enhanced checks for such projects to further mitigate the risk that LCF monies may be spent non-compliantly;
- Continued to report to HMRC to show the value of the LCF monies held by EBs year on year and the percentage of administration costs they claim;
- Implemented an in-house improvement plan to future proof ENTRUST Online (EOL) in relation to the underlying code system, its support platform and to provide a more robust security framework;
- Published our fourth Value for Money (VfM) of the LCF report which shows that 99.9 per cent of LCF projects completed in 2018/2019 achieved their intended aims and 76 per cent of these brought together people from different backgrounds; and
- Completed the closure of the LCF in Wales, with all funds accounted for.
You can read further detail about the work we have undertaken in 2019/2020 in the full document and short summary version which are available on the right hand side of this page.