LGA wants landfill tax reinvested into waste sector

Local authorities have urged the chancellor to pump landfill tax receipts back into the waste sector in the form of funding for waste infrastructure projects, ahead of the governments Spending Round on Wednesday (June 24).

The Spending Round will set out how the government will spend the 740 billion raised from taxpayers during the 2015/2016 period, including how much funding will be allocated to councils through the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

The Spending Round settlement will also impact on Defra, which is pressing to maintain or increase spending on flood defence, and will affect recycling-related expenditure including the funds available for WRAP, the Waste & Resources Action Programme.

The government has confirmed that more than 11 billion will be cut from departmental budgets, with the DCLG among the departments likely to find its budget shrinking compared to previous years.

Priority areas

Following the budget announcement by the Chancellor in March, the Local Government Association (LGA) has identified a number of priority areas for which it wants to see funding maintained. These include waste management, which the LGA notes is the third largest government service in terms of spend and an essential service for local people.

In a report put before its Executive in April ahead of this months Spending Round, the LGA argued that the landfill tax levy must be frozen at 2014/15 levels, and urged the Treasury to consider using existing landfill tax revenue to provide capital for forward thinking waste infrastructure projects through councils.

In its document the LGA said: Councils have been delivering a consistently improving service and are on course to meet EU waste targets. This has been achieved while managing rising demand from increasing household numbers, waste arising and landfill tax. Any increase in the rate of waste taxation through landfill or a residual waste treatment tax would represent a further cut in council funding.

Instead Treasury is urged to redistribute back councils landfill tax receipts to enable needed and forward thinking waste infrastructure projects to get off the ground. This will also provide valuable local jobs and growth.

Crime

Meanwhile, the waste management, reprocessing and organics recycling industries, represented by trade bodies including the Environmental Services Association (ESA), Resource Association, Renewable Energy Association (REA) and the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management (CIWM) have called on the government to protect funding on tackling waste crime.

In a joint letter sent by the four groups to the Treasury today (June 24), the government was warned not to make initiatives to tackle waste crime a casualty of future spending decisions.

The groups said: The damage inflicted by waste crime is huge from the fly-tipping which blights local neighbourhoods, to the organised crime which subverts environmental regulations for illegal profit through activities such as exporting hazardous waste abroad. Waste crime harms the environment, defrauds Revenue & Customs and undermines the economics of the legitimate resource management industry.

WRAP

The Spending Round is also likely to give an indication of the future of the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), whose own funding is currently under review by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). WRAP is currently funded by Defra, as well as receiving money from the devolved Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments.

Despite local authority recycling officers calling for WRAPs budget to be protected (see letsrecycle.com story), Defra has suggested that users of the organisation may have to pay towards its costs, or it may have to be set up as a not-for-profit company (see letsrecycle.com story).

It is expected that the future structure of WRAP will become clear over the summer in the wake of the review. Work on establishing its priorities and securing additional funding sources as well as an assessment of what activities it might drop are thought to have taken place at the organisation’s Banbury headquarters.

In his budget statement in March (see letsrecycle.com story), Chancellor George Osborne revealed that additional budget controls would be placed on the Environment Agency and other regulators in the Spending Round to reduce the costs imposed by regulators of doing business in the UK, without reducing the effectiveness of regulatory enforcement.