Credit card problems are the latest difficulties facing the Environment Agency as it struggles to get waste producers signed up ahead of the Hazardous Waste Regulations on July 16.

On the Environment Agency's hazardous waste producer registration page it has announced that the site is currently suffering from credit card problems and will be out of order for 24 hours.

The financial problems follow a delay in the Agency's bulk registration facility by several months. This has caused havoc across the waste management companies, many of which have thousands of companies to register.

The Environment Agency has announced that it is now able to handle bulk registrations for hazardous waste producers. Companies can register with the use of an online spreadsheet.

Announcing the facility the Agency said: "If you are a waste management contractor wishing to bulk register clients, this option is now available. Please send disks with cheque or BACs."

Previously companies wanting to register small businesses had to do so individually, a task that has been described as "painstakingly slow" and "unnecessary."

Too late
But the waste management industry has not reacted well to the announcement, which many see as far too late. The Hazardous Waste Regulations come fully into force on July 16 2005 and the Environment Agency announced the bulk registration forms only 12 days in advance on July 4 2005.

Mike Walker: director of policy at the ESA said: "This announcement has come far too late, but it is a relief that it has happened. There seems to be no reason why this way of registering was delayed."

And, the task of registering producer companies has been made all the more difficult in the past several weeks as the Agency website has experienced a number of crashes. Waste management company Cleanaway is one firm which decided to use the website to sign its companies up. Having over 1,000 companies to register, the company wanted to register its clients through the bulk register system but was concerned when the service was repeatedly delayed.

Lynne King, central service manager, explained: "The bulk registration system was originally scheduled to be available several months ago but it kept getting delayed. We had to do the job individually for each of our members."

Difficulties
The company has been wrestling with the web site issues for the last week. "The site would crash and we would alert the Agency," said Ms King. "It would be down for about half hour and then would be up and running again for a while before the whole thing would happen again. It would make registering very difficult."

Ms King continued: "Companies only need to be registered when they actually have waste to deal with, so some companies will not necessarily have to be registered by the 16th. We have prioritised our registrations so as far as we are concerned the companies that need to be ready by the deadline are registered."

Cleanaway has said that about 700 of its companies still need to be registered. The company told letsrecycle.com that as a last resort it would have its staff working extra shifts in order to catch the site when it is quieter and less likely to have crashed. Ms King said: "This is most certainly a last resort, I do not want my staff working in the early hours."