A law which requires councils to provide waste disposal services to institutions such as hospitals and prisons for free could be changed in less than a year.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has revealed that it is pushing through changes to Schedule 2 of the Controlled Waste Regulations "as fast as it can" - and that new regulations could be in place by April 2010.

The comments came from Defra's head of waste strategy, Daniel Instone, and his colleague, policy advisor Lucy Toman, who were speaking on Wednesday (May 19) at the letsrecycle.com 'Collection Conference', where Ms Toman also outlined just what would need to be done before any change to the regulation could take place.

Ms Toman explained that at the moment the department was "going through a process of informal consultation with stakeholders," ahead of the establishment of a formal stakeholders' group next month.

The department has already commissioned research into the issue, and has said that the results will be published this month.

This work is then set to be followed by a four month-long formal consultation on policy options beginning in August.

However, Ms Toman revealed that the situation with any actual legislative change was less certain, explaining that "if we're able to make changes in secondary legislation there's a possibility we could have that done in April next year."

"But if we have to make changes to the Environmental Protection Act, it could take longer," she added, in particular referring to the potential impact of a general election next year on the progress of legislation.

Councils

Defra revealed in February 2009 that it was planning to review the schedule (see letsrecycle.com story), which has proved controversial with councils.

Last year, the Local Government Association warned that disposing of the waste for free could cost their members' thousands of pounds (see letsrecycle.com story).

And, commenting on the situation, Defra's head of waste strategy, Daniel Instone, said that there was "no obvious reason" why local authorities couldn't charge for waste disposal from those groups.

Regarding the current review, he added: "It will take as long as it takes, but from Defra's point of view, we're pushing it forward as fast as we can."

Waste Framework Directive

Mr Instone also provided yesterday's event with an update on the government's approach to transposing the revised EU Waste Framework Directive into UK law - a process which is expected to be completed by December 12 2010 (see letsrecycle.com story).

He confirmed that the UK's interpretation of the Directive was that both commingled and source-separated collections would have a place, explaining that: "We have said that both kerbside sort and commingled are acceptable as types of separation."

This comes after the Directive appeared to favour the use of source-separation after 2015 (see letsrecycle.com story).

Mr Instone said that two consultations were now planned, one about "broad principles" was due "out soon" and one about "the details" to follow "afterwards".