TSA has made good progress in overcoming the hurdles involved in its current and last bid. Today (Monday 26 January) it is meeting UK Government representatives to agree the energy-saving target that the industry must meet by 2010. Murray Simpson believes the target could be about 6% but might be a little higher.
It has proved that the industry is energy intensive (stage one) and has drafted a definition of the industrial laundry process that is currently being checked by UK government lawyers to make sure it is “legally watertight” (stage two).
Once the targets have been agreed, and the industry definition passed by the lawyers, TSA will be sending out application forms to laundry sites so that it can submit the industry application. At the same time HMRC (Revenue and Customs) will be auditing the figures from stage one.
The final and crucial stage will be the EU Commission giving State Aids approval and although TSA chief executive Murray Simpson is confident of a satisfactory result on all other stages, he says the chances of EU approval are “finely balanced”.
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