DEFRA announces 14 partnership winners in 135m waste fund

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced a total of 62.5 million under its partnership category for 14 authorities or partnerships handling significant quantities of waste (over 200,000 tonnes a year).

Buckinghamshire, Cambridge, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Devon, Essex, Greater Manchester, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Lancashire, Merseyside, Somerset and Suffolk partnerships have all benefited from the award. A 2.5 million award also went to a partnership between Shropshire and Gloucestershire – two counties that do not even border each other.

The awards, each either 2.5 million or 5 million for each partnership, will go towards two-year infrastructure expansion programmes including new kerbside collection services, in-vessel composting plants and improvements to civic amenity sites and materials recycling facilities.

Part of DEFRA's Waste Implementation Programme, the fund is an important part of reaching the government's target of 25% household waste recycling by 2005-06 under its Waste Strategy 2000. The Department said today's successful local authority partnership proposals cover 7.5 million tonnes of waste generation.

Announcing the funding, environment minister Elliot Morley said: “The proposals clearly demonstrate that many English local authorities are committed to delivering world class recycling and composting services. The best proposals demonstrated great value for money and the number of projects approved reflects this.

“Going forward, there is a lot of hard work in getting these proposals implemented in full. But today's announcement is a huge step forward,” he added.

The Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund saw 140 million given out to 295 projects in its first two rounds from 2001-02. For the third and fourth rounds in 2003 and 2004, 135 million has been allocated including about 90 for 2003 and 45 million for 2004. The government is yet to announce third round winners under the general projects category for bids of up to 1.5 million totalling 27.5 million.

Partnerships
Successful local authority groups welcomed the awards, saying that working in partnerships will be important in moving towards forthcoming municipal waste recycling targets.

Shropshire and Gloucestershire's partnership is somewhat unusual in that it involves two counties that do not border each other. The partnership's 2.5 million award will go to an expansion of existing dry recyclables and green waste kerbside collections and the development of household waste recycling centres.

Steve Burdis, waste management officer at Shropshire county council, said: “It's really pleasing to see it come round and looks like we've been quite successful.
Both Shropshire and Gloucestershire are extremely committed to joint working. Waste management isn’t a job you can do in isolation and it's good to see that partnerships are now coming to fruition.”

Details of today's awards are as follows: