Delayed because of fears it would influence local elections on May 1 2003, the government's report should outline its views on issues including variable charging for waste, an enhanced role for the Waste and Resources Action Programme, a tax on incineration and the formation of a new Delivery Unit at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to drive through waste policy more effectively.
Commenting on the forthcoming government response, Biffa external affairs director Peter Jones called for more strategic leadership from the government.
“Messages continue to be confused by narrowly based perspectives,” he said in a report produced by the Green Alliance. “Product and service supply chains, the waste industry, technology providers, local government and NGOs all await clear, demonstrable signals from Westminster backed by bold and decisive action.”
Funding
More details on major waste financing structures are also keenly awaited by the waste sector, including the successor to DEFRA's 140 million Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund, called the Waste Management Performance Fund. Further clarification is also forthcoming concerning the 100 million diverted towards public waste spending from the government's reform of the Landfill Tax Credits Scheme.
Also writing in the Green Alliance report which looks at how the government should proceed with its response to the Strategy Unit's recommendations, the chair of the Local Government Association's waste executive, Kay Twitchen, said: “We cannot go on expecting to deliver good, sustainable waste management on the cheap.”
Ms Twitchen said that the government needed to tackle the real need for investment in waste and recycling infrastructure. On variable charging, the LGA urged the government to allow local authorities to trial incentivising schemes, but not to force any kind of mandatory system on councils.
She said: “In practice, I think that if the power to charge is allowed within the legislation, what will happen is that a number of local authorities will run pilot schemes of various types. As far as local authorities are concerned, the main issue here is freedom. Our responsibility
is to our electorate, as well as to comply with government targets, and we need to be free
to set in motion schemes that we think will suit the people we serve.”
Landfill Tax
Many in the waste sector would also like to see higher landfill tax rises – above the 3 per tonne per year escalator announced for the post-2005 period by the Chancellor in the April 2003 Budget.
Michael Averill, chief executive at Shanks Waste Services said: “The ultimate higher landfill tax levels proposed in the Strategy Unit report and by the Chancellor need to be introduced sooner rather than later to boost recycling and help achieve the landfill diversion targets set out in the Landfill Directive. Regulation can be regarded as the most appropriate primary mechanism to drive change.”
However, it is known that the Treasury is against any further landfill tax rises, and the government is likely to stick to the existing plan, which would see landfill tax rising to about 35 a tonne by 2011-12.
Hazardous
Baroness Barbara Young, chair of the Environment Agency, stressed that the government needs to provide answers on what will happen to hazardous waste when tighter landfill restrictions enter into force in July 2004.
Baroness Young said: “It’s the hazardous waste, currently about 5 million tonnes per year, that the Agency is most concerned about. Half of it goes to landfill and in the middle of next year that option could stop almost dead. Where will it go? Who can and will continue to manage it? And how? We need answers and we need them quickly. The market is not responding on its own; stronger signals on hazardous waste strategy are needed.
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