We are pleased to publish our Annual Report, setting out the review of our performance against the annual targets set in our 2021-2024 Corporate Plan by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), which we fully met and delivered.
The Landfill Communities Fund (LCF) was launched in 1996 and ENTRUST has operated as the Regulator of the scheme since its inception. This reporting period represented the 25th anniversary of the Fund and, as the Regulator of the Fund, ENTRUST has supported almost 4,100 enrolled EBs to complete more than 61,000 projects with a value of more than £1.62bn across the lifetime of the Fund.
Throughout our tenure as the Regulator ENTRUST's core objectives have always been to:
- Mitigate the risk of financial loss to the Exchequer by providing HMRC with independent assurance that LCF monies are spent compliantly in accordance with the Regulations;
- Continue to deliver the requirements of the Terms of Approval (TOA), which ensures we fully support HMRC in regulating the Fund and deliver the annual objectives and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) set by HMRC; and
- To support funders, EBs and project applicants, using our 'coaching to compliance' ethos to deliver projects which improve their local community or environment whilst remaining in line with the Landfill Tax Regulations (1996) (Regulations).
Across the last twelve months we continued to prioritise continuous improvement measures, from scaling up our analysis and understanding of stakeholder satisfaction scores, to delivering all of our training by virtual means (thus reducing costs and resource issues), to increasing the rigour of our assurance work by developing our Project Site Visits (PSVs) framework. From our previous assurance work, we identified a gap between assessing the financial compliance of a project, with the project initially registered with ENTRUST compared to the actual project that was delivered. Furthermore, we also considered it was prudent to assess a project's VfM and whether the project had delivered its aims and objectives. Across the year, our approach in developing the framework evolved and in 2022/2023, we are committed to working with our Stakeholders to further refine and improve it.
Running parallel to our commitment to continuous improvement, we continued to focus on ensuring two of HMRC's strategic priorities for the LCF continued to be met. In particular to:
- Reduce EB Administration costs to below the recommended guidance of 7.5 per cent of annual project expenditure; and
- Reduce EB Unspent funds at year end to no more than 1.5 times an EB's LCF income in that year.
Chief Executive, Christopher Welford said: "Whilst the impact of the Pandemic has been an ever present challenge over the last two years, I am hopeful that we are now moving back to a more settled period of time. As ever, we will continue to provide support to all of our stakeholders where they experience any continued difficulty, but we also look forward to the LCF continuing to deliver innovative, strong, compliant projects which improve local communities and the environment in England and Northern Ireland."
You can read further detail about the work we have undertaken during this period in the full document and short summary version which are available on the right hand side of this page.