OK, so you are probably fed up with yet another article written about what Brexit means for this, that or the other, but if you are an organisation with over 250 staff then bear with me, this one could be worth reading, and I’ll try and keep is short and to the point!

So ESOS, it came out of the EU, and Phase 1 had to be completed by December 2015 (with a few ‘extensions which weren’t allowed to be called ‘extensions’ after that!). Phase 2 is now. It started on 6^th December 2015 and needed to be completed by 5^th December 2019. So, a few people are asking ‘If we are out of the EU by then do I need to bother with Phase 2?”

If you want the quick answer, then “Yes”! Here is why.

UK Government triggers Article 50 by the end of March 2017; the 2-year exit process means that Brexit happens at the end of March 2019. By then we are only about 7 months away from the deadline, and a number of organisations will have fully complied by then. It would not be equitable to scrap phase 2 for those organisations that haven’t.

The ‘Great Repeal Bill’ has been outlined and will initially transfer all EU legislation into UK law on Brexit allowing the Government to pick over that will then be domestic legislation and change/delete/enhance/leave alone as they see fit. Will they do this in 7 months? Well seeing that most consultation responses fail to be completed in that time scale it does not seem remotely possible even if it were their top priority and it will certainly not be that.

The Government has also stated that it wants to simplify the carbon and energy reporting and taxation landscape. It wants to scrap CRC and have one energy tax which will be CCL. They also want to scrap the CRC reporting and probably the mandatory GHG reporting and have one reporting process which will be modelled on ESOS.

So, Phase 2 is there to stay, Phase 3 will happen, but maybe it will look a bit different. If you need to comply with ESOS don’t delay, take advantage of a calmer energy auditing sector now and contact IE to get a quote this year.