Cambridgeshire councils reject Meacher plan to fund poor performers

Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Joint Waste Management Strategy, a partnership organisation of seven local authorities, said that local authorities with high recycling targets should be given more help to achieve higher performance figures and not less, in its response to DEFRA's consultation on its allocation of the 140 million for recycling. Last Friday, Environment Minister Michael Meacher suggested that most of the money could go to local authorities who have low recycling rates.

Bernard Warr, strategy co-ordinator, said that funds should be allocated on the number of households or population and that the government's view that priority should be given to low performing authorities, particularly at the expense of those who have made it a priority was “unequivocal”.

Mr Warr said: “To allocate more than 50% of the available funding to ‘helping turn round low performance’, merely rewards authorities that have not prioritised recycling in their spending before now. The partners believe that the first 20% of recycling is much easier to achieve than the second 20%, therefore the funding priority should be to facilitate the higher levels of recycling.”

He added: “The strategy partners are proposing to work towards a 40% recycling rate by 2010 and 60% rate by 2020; this will only be achieved if financial support for innovation and high recycling is forthcoming at an early stage.”

No Justificaton

And Mr Warr said that he was against the proposal that London should be allocated a larger share to help overcome their difficulties. “If there is agreement amongst London authorities, as is suggested, then there is no reason why they should not unite and make a partnership bid like the rest of the country has to. There can be no justification for favouring London authorities in the way suggested.”

Concern was expressed about possible effects the fund could have on the proposed fit with Local Public Service Agreement (PSA) schemes which Cambridgeshire County Council has entered into. The waste forum felt that it was unfair to suggest that PSA authorities should perform even higher than their stretch targets to be eligible for grant under the 140 million scheme and that this should be dropped.

The waste forum told DEFRA: “The proposal appears to erode the principle of joint working between two tier authorities, which is strongly encouraged in Best Value and Waste Management and which we fully support.”

But Chris Brown, assistant director, environment for Cambridgeshire County Council, denied suggestions that the Government might “pay twice” for the same achievement. “This is not the case since the purpose of the 140 million fund is to assist and encourage Councils to meet their statutory targets (and hence collectively the national target).

“The purpose of the PSA reward grant is to incentivise and reward performance beyond that point. Though conceivably a PSA authority might receive Government support twice it would be for different achievements – up to and then beyond the targets set.”