Defra to press on with financial recycling incentives

The comments come after Bank holiday Monday papers reported that Gordon Brown was to Veto moves in the Climate Change Bill to let councils charge households for how much they throw out. The Daily Mail lead the reports with “Bin tax dumped.”

Speaking today, a Defra spokeswoman said: “Five local authorities will next year be undertaking pilot schemes to create incentives for recycling.

“We will evaluate the impact of those pilots before making a final decision on whether other local authorities can introduce similar schemes,” she added.

Council leaders, however, were less confident over the future of the scheme. In a statement issued before Defra's confirmation, they took the line that the projects would be scrapped and said that Mr Brown was making a “popularist” U-turn.

The Local Government Association questioned why £7.5 million was still be spent on pilot projects if the Prime Minister had already decided to abandon the controversial idea.

Councillor Paul Bettison, chairman of the Local Government Association's environment board, said: “This must be making him dizzy. It is the third U-turn he has carried out on these financial incentives. Millions of pounds have been set aside to pay for councils carrying out theses pilots, and that will be wasted.”

Mr Bettison insisted that the scheme had suppot from waste minister Joan Ruddock, environment minister Hilary Benn and former Environment minister and foreign secretary David Miliband.

The decision to give councils the powers to introduce financial incentives for recycling in order to help EU targets to divert waste from landfill was followed by months of campaigning by the LGA, which says that councils face fines £150 a tonne if they send too much waste to landfill.

Last week, Judicaelle Hammond, head of producer responsibility at Defra, also pointed to how incentives could be used to encourage plastics recycling, indicating that they may not just be weight-based (see letsrecycle.com story).

Today, Defra said that the “earliest” the trials would take place would be 2009 and that it did not know who the local authorities were, as it had not yet opened the application process.

The Department's spokeswoman said: “The schemes will need to be backed up by various checks and balances that include a requirement that local authorities provide good kerbside recycling services so that residents have ample opportunity to recycle.

She added: “There is also a requirement that local authorities take account of the needs of any potentially disadvantaged groups when piloting the schemes, and a requirement to have a fly-tipping prevention strategy in place.”