Councils say government funding for recycling is “woefully inadequate”

Funding available to local authorities to meet future recycling targets is “woefully inadequate” according to documents prepared for the Local Government Association’s waste and environmental management executive committee which meets next week. “It provides modest additional funding for waste management, which we believe to be woefully inadequate to meet the step changes demanded by the national strategy and the Landfill Directive. These are likely to cost hundreds of millions of pounds.” The document continues: “Increases of 1,127 million in standard spending assessments for environmental, protective and cultural services, of which waste management is but one element, falls 1,638 million (60%) short of the LGA submission of 2,634 million.” The executive committee is warned that while the government has allocated 140 million of additional support for council recycling “it is clear that this is nowhere near enough to meet the new statutory recycling targets”. The way this money will be allocated is still to be decided. The LGA suggests that all councils should benefit in order to encourage them to do more recycling. But, it also thinks that a formula should be used to allocated the money, perhaps based on population and other criteria. And, with ongoing discussion in government between the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and The Treasury, the LGA has restated its view that there is a strong argument for councils to be able to benefit more the from the Landfill Tax credits scheme.