The council was awarded two stars by the Audit Commission which said it had developed effective short to medium term plans and challenging targets for improvement to the waste management service. Along with a strong performance in reducing the amount of waste going to landfill and improved recycling and composting rates.
But the commission said that Somerset's waste minimisation targets were not challenging enough and that long term priorities had not been identified.
Somerset's waste strategy co-ordinator, Steve Palfrey, told letsrecycle.com that “The latest data available to the commission was for 2002/03 and our waste per household certainly did stand out as quite high.”
But since this, a series of measures imposed by the council have meant the waste growth rate figure for 2003/04 was pleasingly down by 6%. He said that waste was currently growing by 3.4% year on year, but since the report, the aim was to reduce this to 1% by 2010, in line with population growth.
The inspectors also said that the council's recycling performance is just short of its statutory targets. But that it had excellent prospects for improvement as there was a clear high level commitment to deliver. Staff resources had been increased, and the council had a track record of bringing about effective change.
The Somerset Waste Partnership between Somerset County Council and the five local district and borough councils in area, collected 271,900 tonnes of waste this year of which 27% was recycled and it has a target of 40% by 2005/06.
The Commission recommended that Somerset adopted a long term strategy that reflected the needs and aspirations of customers and stakeholders alike. It must also work with its partners to ensure less trade and commercial waste enters the household waste stream, it said.
Mr Palfrey said that many of the commission's recommendations have, or are in the process of being adopted by the council. Trade waste abuses had been tackled, he added.
“All of the waste collection authorities are in the process of making significant changes to the way waste is collected in Somerset,” Mr Palfrey explained. “The majority of households will be moving to a fortnightly collection which will provide a major incentive to recycle.”
Home composting has been extended to 25,000 households, glass is to be included in those areas where it is currently excluded from multi-material recycling schemes and a weekly food waste collection scheme is going to be introduced, he said.
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