At a meeting of the LARAC executive yesterday, it was agreed that Mr Deakin will take over immediately as chair from Chris Davey of West Sussex County Council who will shortly join WRAP, the Waste and Resources Action Programme, as its “local government officer”. Mr Davey will be working on projects including training for recycling officers and kerbside collection work.
Mr Deakin said: “At our executive meeting yesterday we thanked Chris for all his work as LARAC chair over the past two and three quarter years as well as his time as treasurer before that. He has brought LARAC on a long way and we wish him well for the future.”
The new chair added: “His appointment at WRAP is important and I am sure we will all want WRAP to work with local authorities. Yes, they are looking at jacking up reprocessing capacity, but we also need to jack up collection. From the local authority side we have to supply the right materials in the right form.”
Mr Deakin has been with North Dorset, which has a recycling rate of 17%, for 12 years and is also chairman of the south west recycling forum. Looking ahead, he said that LARAC would like to increase its membership to all local authorities. “We have a very large percentage of local authority recycling officers as members and are growing our services to them. We all have a very difficult job to do in reaching the best value standards and I hope we can work together to do that.”
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