High performing local authorities will miss recycling targets

LARAC chairman Andy Doran and vice chairman Durk Reyner were at the Palace of Westminster last night to give evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into “Winning the War on Waste”. They levelled criticisms at the government for providing inadequate funding for local authority recycling, and for “penalising” high performing councils.

“We think around a quarter of local authorities will fail to reach their recycling targets in 18 months' time,” said Durk Reyner, who is also customer services manager at Welwyn Hatfield Council in Hertfordshire, an authority in the top 25% of English councils for recycling.

Mr Reyner told MPs that when the government had decided on statutory targets for recycling, the poor recycling councils at the time were set far lower targets than those councils that had already decided to do something about recycling.

Penalised
“What will the government do when the high performers fail to reach their targets?” Mr Reyner said. “The feeling is that we shouldn't have done anything about recycling at all until the government set the targets – because then our targets would only have been 8% instead of 25% or higher. We've been penalised for recognising the need for recycling and trying to do something about it before we were legally obliged.”

The situation for high performing councils has not been aided by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' decision to focus funding on low-performing councils, for example in the 140m Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund.

Mr Doran, who is also executive assistant to the leader at Surrey County Council, said that “hundreds of millions of pounds” would be needed to solve the UK's waste crisis. He said that some of this might come from the successor to the Landfill Tax Credit Scheme, and echoed his letter to the Secretary of State (see letsrecycle.com story) calling for recycling to be made “compulsory” rather than voluntary through some kind of variable charging system.

Planning
The Parliamentary committee also heard from the Environmental Services Association, the trade body for waste management companies operating in the UK, and the Planning Officers' Society. Both organisations raised the issue of planning difficulties in expanding the UK's sustainable waste management infrastructure.

Continued on page 2