Court rules method of setting up deposit return scheme was 'unlawful'

dailyrecord.co.uk:

The way that the Scottish Government's deposit return scheme (DRS) was set up was unlawful, a court has ruled.Lanarkshire shopkeeper Abdul Majid won a judicial review against the firm which was set up to oversee the scheme by the Court of Session on Friday.Majid, who runs Costcutter and Baba’s Kitchen in Bellshill, challenged the legality of the retailer handling fees which Circularity Scotland was trying to impose.

The company proposed that retailers would have to pay a fee for each item of scheme packaging collected.The court ruled that Circularity Scotland had no power to set the fees and that it should not have tried to impose a flat fee.This comes just weeks after the scheme was postponed until 2025 following a row with the UK Government over whether glass could be included.The Record also revealed that Circularity Scotland was on the brink of collapse, with Green minister Lorna Slater facing calls to resign.Scottish Grocers' Federation chief executive Pete Cheema welcomed the ruling.He said the decision "essentially stops the DRS progressing in its current form" and called for the UK Government to make this legal position binding when the UK-wide scheme is introduced in 2025.He said: “The court of session has held that the way that the Scottish Government and Circularity Scotland had set up the Deposit Return Scheme was unlawful and did not comply with the regulations made by the Scottish Parliament."CSL had no powers to set the fees that it sought to impose on retailers and even if it had, then they had still got it wrong by trying to impose a flat fee on all retailers, despite the difference in costs to the operators.“This decision essentially stops the DRS progressing in its current form - it’s hugely