Shotton underspend will see 500,000 refund

The underspend is revealed in the recently-published financial accounts for the Waste and Resources Action Programme for the year ending 31 March 2005. The accounts also comment on several other areas of WRAPs' activities including the Recycling Fund, the appointment of a new director and the value of contracts awarded by WRAP for services of companies and organisations of which directors of WRAP were also directors.

Shotton
The Shotton conversion project allocated 21 million worth of funding from WRAP through its environmental body WREB. WRAP itself gave about 2.12 million to with the remaining money coming from the waste management industry through the Landfill Tax credits system.

The drum pulper at the start of the UPM-Shotton recycling process

The WRAP accounts reveal the overpayment and say that the directors of WREB have “advised that the this overpayment is recoverable in full. On receipt it will be repaid to the funders of WREB.”

Waste management company environmental bodies have welcomed the refund. John Leaver, chairman and managing director of the SITA trust said: “This is good news for our trust at a time when it continues to be oversubscribed and we will be placing those returned funds back into our reserves for distribution to other worthy projects in the scheme.”

”This is good news for our trust at a time when it continues to be oversubscribed “
– John Leaver – SITA Trust

Recycling Fund

The Accounts show that the Recycling Fund, the first venture capital fund dedicated to the UK recycling sector, made only two investments out of 126 applications it received. But, a spokeswoman for WRAP pointed out that this figure was “broadly in line with investment ratios of this type” and that the investments were now speeding up in line with a wider approach by the fund.

Directors

The accounts confirm that Ray Georgeson, one of the founders of WRAP and currently its director of policy, was put forward to join the board and his nomination has been accepted. Mr Georgeson, who was awarded an MBE for his environment campaigning in 2000, has played a key role at WRAP and in the broader recycling arena.

WRAP director Nick Francis

Other director information within the accounts includes related party transactions. Among this is listed the services paid for by WRAP to companies and organisations of which directors of WRAP were also directors. The highest sums, totalling more than 500,000 were to companies and organisations of which Nick Francis was a director. This consisted of 437,507 to Network Recycling and 69,267 to Community Recycling Services.