The waste management industry must deliver up to 20 billion in new capital infrastructure this decade to ensure that the UK meets its recycling and landfill diversion targets. The government indicated in its review of waste policies that it holds ambitions not only to meet statutory European requirements, but to exceed the targets and to manage the UKs waste in accordance with the waste hierarchy.
The waste management industry will be a crucial element in delivering this success but will only be able to do so if the policy framework, particularly for planning, enables the smooth delivery of new infrastructure.
Planning
We have seen the communities minister recently bow to vocal local community opposition and withhold PFI credits from Norfolks residual waste project, despite the authority and its contractor adhering to all due consultation processes. But in reality there will always be local opposition to new economic infrastructure development, a fact which is duly recognised in the governments own proposals for business rates retention which Department for Communities and Local Government recently consulted on.
These proposals are designed to overcome the problem that the costs of new infrastructure fall disproportionately on local people, while the benefits are relatively thinly dispersed across a wider population, by allowing Local Authorities to retain a portion of the business rates generated by new development in their area.
Incentives
The ESA strongly supports the idea of greater business rate retention and agrees with the government that this is one way in which greater incentives can be provided for local communities to accept the development of new infrastructure. The waste management industry has for many years called on the government to explore local incentives, whether through the provision of low-cost local renewable energy or through other means such as Planning Gain or the Community Infrastructure Levy.
When it comes to residual waste infrastructure though, ESA believes that the Government should go further. The coalition agreement between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party included a commitment to allow local communities to retain not only a proportion but all of the business rates associated with new renewable energy developments. ESA believes that this renewable energy commitment should be extended to include waste and recycling infrastructure.
Benefits
Previous ESA analysis has shown that the environmental and economic benefits of new waste management infrastructure tend to outweigh those of new renewable wind projects, leading to almost three times as many carbon savings and over four times as many jobs for the same amount of investment. This infrastructure is also desperately needed for the UK to meet its EU obligations and should therefore be considered for eligibility for the full incentive of the retention of all business rates.
‘Planning by appeal has become commonplace for waste and recycling infrastructure whereby applications receive officer recommendation only to be rejected by the local planning committee but then reinstated upon appeal. ESA believes that extending the coalitions Renewable Energy Commitment to waste and recycling infrastructure would help to provide real benefits to local communities and help the UK to meet its environmental objectives while boosting green growth.
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