Weekly waste collection advocate Eric Pickles last night (October 4) conceded that alternate weekly collections should be used where local support is evident during a fringe event on waste at the Conservative Party Conference.
At the event organised by think-tank Policy Exchange in Birmingham, the communities secretary was also urged by waste management firm SITA UK to ensure that a provision to encourage community buy-in for waste infrastructure projects was included in the forthcoming Localism Bill.
I believe in localism – if your population is happy with that [AWC] that's fine
Eric Pickles, communities secretary
Mr Pickles, who has been an outspoken critics of alternate weekly collections (AWC) both in opposition and since coming to power (see letsrecycle.com story), was grilled by delegates over his stance on collection frequency.
During the event, Mr Pickles was “challenged” on the issue by Councillor Mike Jordan of Blaby district council, who said that, when adopting AWC, his council “had not just done it to improve recycling but to save money”.
Responding to Cllr Jordan, Mr Pickles said: “I believe in localism – if your population is happy with that that's fine. But I don't think there should be enforced decisions to adopt it [AWC] if they are unhappy with it and I don't think that a government should be forcing them to do something through fines or regulations.”
Mr Pickles added that he would be “happy as Larry” if councils were able to give residents the system that they preferred – regardless of whether the system was AWC or weekly collections.
In his opening address, Mr Pickles said: “If anything to me sums up the Labour years, it has been a way in which the whole question of recycling, the whole question of disposal of waste, has become highly political.”
He added: “They decided that the only way to get the recycling numbers up was to treat the British public like criminals if they wanted weekly waste collections.”
Incentives
When questioned about what incentives would be given to councils to encourage recycling, Mr Pickles said it was unlikely that there would be any substantial funding available to local authorities in this area.
“We are already doing a review and incentives are in that and we hope to report on that but, if I can speak frankly, the government is brasic, there is no money,” said Mr Pickles.
“You saw that with George Osborne's speech, and the idea that you could come to us with requests for funding or a grant, it is not going to happen. I think we can anticipate that things are going to be very tough and you are going to have to provide services for less.”
Community buy-in
Also at the event, David Palmer-Jones, chief executive of SITA UK, reiterated calls made at the Liberal Democrats' conference last month calling for greater community buy-in in order to incentivise communities to accept waste infrastructure development (see letsrecycle.com story).
Mr Palmer-Jones said that between £15-20 billion worth of investment would have to be made in the UK waste sector to tackle the 50 million tonnes of waste currently being landfilled each year.
And, last night, Mr Palmer-Jones presented Mr Pickles with a draft clause outlining SITA UK's proposal for community buy-in to be placed into the forthcoming Decentralisation and Localism Bill – which is already set to end ‘pay-as-you-throw' trials (see letsrecycle.com story).
Commenting on the SITA proposal, Mr Pickles said: “We will see from the Localism Bill we are going to move over to an incentive scheme for housing, and for social housing and travellers' sites. We have got a review taking place with waste and I will certainly have a look at this [proposal by SITA] – although something like this would have to be costed out.”
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