But it has left the door open for future changes, saying that any variable charging scheme would need to be designed in a way that avoided disproportionate impact on low-income households.
” Any scheme that was taken on would need to be predicted on adequate provision of recycling composting facilities “
-Defra
Defra made the comment this week in its response to the EFRA committee's fourth 2004/05 report.
The department stated: “Any scheme that was taken on would need to be predicted on adequate provision of recycling composting facilities. The government also feels that effective enforcement measures would need to be in place.”
In the EFRA report, the select committee had said that variable charging for waste collections would be a further encouragement to householders to tackle the waste stream. However, the committee had warned that care would need to be taken to ensure that variable charging did not have an unfair impact, especially on low-income families.
Incentive schemes
Defra also commented on the idea of incentive schemes, which the EFRA select committee had supported.
The department said that local authorities in the UK already have the power to run incentive schemes and it pointed out that recent research showed that at least half of English local authorities have run or are running some form of incentive scheme.
Defra said that the schemes that have been run are not monitored close enough to research the results: “The research indicated that incentive schemes are usually run on an ad hoc basis and not integrated with an area's long-term strategy for municipal waste management.
“The very limited monitoring and evaluation undertaken on such schemes means we have little evidence of their efficacy in helping to drive up recycling and reduce waste.”
Subscribe for free