The County Surveyors Society's waste committee commissioned a report last year into what funding is needed to enable local authorities to meet the government's waste strategy targets and found that the proposed 140 million was a gross underestimation. Although the full report has not been published, the waste committee felt that it needed to present its initial findings to the Cabinet Office PIU which is completing a report into the financial requirements for the waste strategy. The PIU study, which is looking at whether the UK can meet European recycling targets, asked for comments from industry experts on ways to increase recycling and on different recycling methods before it drew up its project outline.
Steve Pearson of Derbyshire County Council and secretary of the County Surveyors Society waste committee, told letsrecycle.com that the report is geared to try and give the government an indication of resource requirements to meet the targets that have been set.
The research looked at recycling rates and costs of recycling in three “typical” waste disposal authorities: North Yorkshire, Kent and Waste Sussex. And the report, which should be published in the next three to four weeks, will conclude that the 140million will “not go very far”.
Environment Minister Michael Meacher has said repeatedly that councils have no excuse not to hit recycling targets with enough money allocated through the 140million, 50million New Opportunities Funding, 2.2million PFI funding and 1.1billion for “environment and culture”. But, it is thought that the PIU team will take careful note of the County Surveyors' research when assessing whether the UK can meet the waste strategy targets and if more funding is needed, how it should be distributed.
And debate is continuing as to whether the 140million should be directed to low performing authorities or high performing ones. Although it looks increasingly likely that this year's 50million will be allocated on a formula basis which will see rate support grants given to deprived regions such as inner city areas that generally have low recycling rates. But next year, the remaining 90million could be allocated on a grant basis.
In recent week's Mr Meacher appears to have been suggesting that a formula approach could be used with authorities with recycling rates of under 5% being targeted for money. This is because generally authorities in poorer and more deprived parts of the UK have the lower recycling rates.
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