Increased joint-working between councils and charging for more aspects of waste collection could be on the cards as councils try to cope with a reduction in government funding in next week's Spending Review.
But, they stressed that councils were committed to protecting frontline services, and highlighted opportunities for them to generate income to fill the gap left by the cuts in government funding, by measures such as introducing trade waste collections.
Outlining councils' priorities, Clive Harris, waste policy advisor at the Local Government Association (LGA), said: “Fiscal consolidation is the top priority of the whole public sector and councils have told us that they are committed to reshaping public service delivery in a way that makes savings while protecting key frontline services.”
He explained that councils expected this to involve “tough choices and trade-offs”, but had tried to make the government aware of where savings could made without damaging service delivery.
In its submission to the government ahead of next week's Spending Review announcement, the LGA called on the government to consider abolishing landfill tax to help address the funding shortfall of up to £20 billion-a-year it claimed councils could face from cuts to their budgets (see letsrecycle.com story).
LATS
Mr Harris also highlighted local authority opposition to the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme (LATS), explaining that “some councils believe LATS hasn't worked and has, in fact, had a perverse impact on enabling capital investment and it does not offer a proper financial incentives for them to reduce disposal costs.
The government has already cast doubt over the future of the LATS system after 2013 (see letsrecycle.com story), and Julia Barrett, chair of the waste committee at ADEPT – formerly the County Surveyors Society – said she expected the system to be “knocked on the head” in the Spending Review.
She noted that landfill tax has superseded LATS as the key driver encouraging councils to drive waste out of landfill, explaining that “landfill tax is the thing that focuses our minds”.
Income generation
One way [of coping] is to cut services; another way is to derive income
Julia Barrett, chair of the waste committee at ADEPT
And, she pointed out the opportunities for income generation that scrapping LATS could offer. In the past, councils have had concerns over running trade waste collections due to the potential for the volumes to be counted as ‘municipal waste' and therefore be subject to the decreasing amount of waste councils can landfill under LATS (see letsrecycle.com story).
She added: “One way [of coping] is to cut services; another way is to derive income – drawing less from the central grant by deriving income in other ways.”
The potential to charge for more services was also highlighted by Mr Harris who said: “Charging for garden waste collections is seen as a potential option, as part of a choice between an ‘EasyJet' model of having a core service with surcharges for add-ons or a ‘John Lewis' service where everything is universally available.”
Joint-working
Both Mr Harris and Ms Barrett highlighted the increased role that joint-working between councils could play in cutting costs, with Ms Barrett claiming there was potentially a “new urgency” about the approach, including statutory joint waste authorities (JWAs) coming “back on the agenda”.
There are currently six JWAs in England – four in London, one for Greater Manchester and one for Merseyside – although powers giving more councils the opportunity to establish them came into force in February 2009 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Ms Barrett noted that the opportunities for joint-working could include running cross-border collections. Earlier this week Dorset's councils revealed they are currently in the process of examining whether or not to introduce a county-wide collection service (see letsrecycle.com story).
Clive Harris, waste policy advisor, LGA
Mr Harris outlined further option for joint-working, explaining that: “While there are over 400 district and unitary authorities with logistical operations that often run on council boundaries, local authorities have highlighted the potential for refuse depots to work on a sub-regional basis to deliver savings”.
“However, they have stressed that more incentives could be needed to encourage joint-working – such as higher LATS incentives for larger partnerships.”
Cuts
Ms Barrett noted that, in terms of cuts to services, “I am hearing people talking about looking at the cost of providing recycling services, some looking at closing recycling centres, reducing opening hours or enforcing tighter rules for their sites to only be used by residents”.
But, she added that “I've not heard anybody talking about reducing communication and education. It's a sign of the times that we want to reduce the amount of waste so we don't need to deal with it at the end.”
And, she stressed the importance of communications at a national level, and the role that WRAP had to play in this, despite the budget constraints it is also facing as an organisation (see letsrecycle.com story).
“What's been positive is WRAP is being very pro-active engaging the local authority sector over what should be in its next business plan,” she said. “We should not underestimate the potential of having a national message.”
Collections
The potential to cut collection costs was highlighted by Mr Harris who said councils were looking at options such as reducing the number of containers they used and also whether recycling was always the best environmental and economic option for waste.
However, Ms Barrett highlighted a potential conflict between councils looking to cut costs and the government's plans to encourage them to increase the “frequency and quality” of their collections – as outlined in the current review of waste policy.
“The big elephant in the room is that it's quite clear the high-performing councils are those with AWC in place – if there's any move to increase frequency we'll see performance drop and costs go up,” she said.
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