Government policy on ELVs “suffers from major loophole”

In a letter written to the Department of Trade and Industry and obtained by letsrecycle.com, Mike Nicholls warned: “Local authorities currently have a duty under the Refuse Disposal (Amenity) Act 1978, section 1, to provide places where their residents may deposit their ELVs free of charge.”

He added: “Consequently, whilst RDA s.1 remains in force owners will not have to meet ELV disposal costs if they do not wish to: the law provides for the whole cost to fall on local government.”

Local authorities first were given the duty to dispose of ELVs by the Civic Amenities Act of 1967, with the vehicle-related provisions later consolidated into the RDA of 1978. According to Mr Nicholls, however, the 1990 Environmental Protection Act did not repeal the provisions for local authorities to dispose of ELVs free of charge, since then, the two acts have been running in parallel and duty of the EPA is for household waste, which does not cover ELVs.

The situation as laid out by Mr Nicholls makes a mockery of the announcement made last month by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Patricia Hewitt, that “last owners” would be responsible for costs of disposal until 2007.

After the RDA came into force at the send of the seventies, scrap metal prices meant that yards were paying last owners for their ELVs, and this meant that local authorities' free disposal sites were not needed. According to Mr Nicholls, the legislation requiring councils to take in ELVs free of charge “faded from memory”. However, since then metals prices have dropped and environmental standards have risen, so that it now costs more to dispose of ELVs than the materials are worth.

Legally responsible
In his letter, Mr Nicholls warned that as the law is now, last owners could abandon their vehicles with impunity because it is their council that is legally responsible for disposal.

He said: “Local authorities have long wished to see the repeal of the RDA s.1 unlimited duty to provide civic amenity sites that take residents’ wastes of all descriptions free of charge. Repeal would support Government policy on waste minimisation and 'producer pays', and would at long last carry out what Parliament intended when EPA was enacted.”