LWaRB considers only four out of 142 funding bids

The Board, which was conceived to help kick-start infrastructure development in London, has charge of an £84 million fund to help support recycling in the capital and in particular support infrastructure development.

However, to date, its sole recipient of funding has been the 12-month Recycle for London communications campaign, to which the Board awarded £1.5 million when it met for the first time in September 2008 (see letsrecycle.com story) and no infrastructure projects have received any money.

At a meeting yesterday at City Hall, before board members convened to discuss four projects in private, questions were raised by some  about how long it was taking to approve funding for projects and the fact that only four applications were set to be presented for approval.

Andy Holdcroft, who was appointed chief operating officer of the London Waste and Recycling Board in August, added that the accounting team had only been assembled “at the end of August” and they had hoped to discuss a fifth business case but it had not been completed in time.

He said: “We had a three week period to write the business cases to go to the financial side of things to be evaluated. There were five [projects] we wanted to develop but one fell by the wayside because it couldn't get its business case developed.”

Concern

Members asked whether the current scrutiny arrangements would affect the number of projects presented for approval at the Board's next meeting on December 8. Mr Holdcroft said the application process would be altered ahead of the meeting to “allow more time with investment committee”.

Peter Jones, the Mayoral appointment to the Board, claimed that it had concentrated on “low-hanging fruit” in its first set of business cases and it had been “against the collar” in terms of time available with necessary consultants.

Issues surrounding the speed of delivery of the funding have previously been raised by the Board, with members calling for a “step change” to increase the work carried out by officers when the Board met in December 2008 (see letsrecycle.com story).

At yesterday's meeting, the Board also presented its annual report for approval, which showed that it had an operating surplus of £1.7 million for its first half-financial year (for the period September 12 to March 31) and received a further £3.5 million in funding from Defra during that period.

The Board's decision on applications discussed yesterday is due within the next couple of days.