Neil Thornton, the director of environmental quality and waste for the Department for Environment, food and Rural Affairs, was addressing the opening conference of this year’s CIWM Conference in Torbay.
Although he was keen not to give too much away concerning the current review of England’s long-term waste strategy by Defra, Mr Thornton admitted that the concept of variable charging was an “interesting” possibility.
Mr Thornton’s comments came on the day Sir Michael Lyon revealed to the Times newspaper that his review of local government funding was likely to make recommendations concerning variable charging.
” When the government thinks about variable charging it will undoubtedly be looking at the realities of fly-tipping “
– Neil Thornton – director of environmental quality and waste, Defra
The front-page article suggested a mechanism could see householders charged a certain amount – perhaps 50-75p – per kilogram of non-recyclable “black bag” waste they leave out for collection.
Mr Thornton told CIWM delegates today: “Sir Michael Lyons has been talking about his review, of course, and one of the issues that is interesting is whether variable charging makes sense.”
Though the Defra official refrained from commenting extensively on the as-yet incomplete strategy review, he revealed that responses from the recent public consultation did bring up variable charging as a significant theme.
And, prompted by a question from a delegate from Suffolk county council, Mr Thornton agreed that “it is right to identify fly-tipping as a concern” regarding the possibility of bringing in new charging systems where householders are penalised for putting out excessive waste.
He said: “When the government thinks about variable charging it will undoubtedly be looking at the realities of fly-tipping. There is some difference between the kind of commercial fly-tipping that is essentially illegal waste management and the householder dumping their bag of waste outside someone else’s property, so we would have to be sensitive to this.
“But we could see if some kind of peer pressure in the community is bearable, a local community approach to this,” Mr Thornton suggested.
LGA
The meeting also heard a strong speech from Cllr Michael Haines, deputy chairman of the Local Government Association’s environment board, demanding variable charging be brought in as the answer to the current “funding crisis in municipal waste management”.
Mr Haines revealed that authorities including Essex county council and Cheshire county council were facing an “affordability gap” running into hundreds of millions of pounds for their services – even before any fines for missing landfill limits have been imposed.
The councillor from Teignbridge district council said: “It’s time to look more closely at different ways of funding waste services locally. Give councils more control over waste – it is hard if not impossible to reach these targets if charging is not in our arsenal.
“We need charging. We need the power to charge. There is cross-party consensus at a local level that we need charging,” Cllr Haines stressed.
Cllr Haines warned that should the charging powers be granted to local authorities, it would still take many three to five years to put such systems in place.
He added that along with variable charging powers, more emphasis on producer responsibility was also needed to bring more funding from packaging producers to improve collections.
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