Certainly each time I've spoken to CAA staff about it (actually its usually me pinning them in a corner and crying on their shoulder or shouting loudly at them), they express astonishment at the amount charged.
"Nothing to do with us", they say. "It shouldn't add any more work as the paperwork was being done already, it's just being done by a different part of the organisation".
So all in all, a fairly typical legislative screw-up with known, but unconsidered consequences.
We all told them what would happen but they ignored us. Then they brought in (late) the ELA1 exemption.
The French I note are setting up a grand-fathering right to continue a form of pilot maintenance with a licence for you to continue to maintain your own aircraft, if you have shown the ability to have done so previously.