LGA has ‘great concerns’ over scope of EPR scheme administrator

Defra launched the 10-week consultation back in July, which set out a number of “minimal” changes (see letsrecycle.com story).

This included plans for a cap of 20% of the cost on the amount a scheme administrator is able to “adjust the disposal cost payment to a local authority where they consider an authority is not delivering against reasonable cost and performance benchmarks”.

In its response published yesterday (18 November), the LGA argued that EPR should should be driven by the outcomes that Defra is seeking to achieve “which is to prevent waste and transfer the cost of dealing with used packaging away from taxpayers”.

“It is concerning that the regulations add a third aim of managing council performance by giving the scheme administrator the power to issue councils with improvement plans and withhold payments based on performance,” the LGA said.

Concerns

The LGA added in its response that the concept of an efficient and effective household waste and recycling service is “poorly defined, yet this underpins significant powers for the scheme administrator”.

“For many years, local government has been finding ways of making their services as efficient as possible, responding to local circumstances. Only councils can fully appreciate the context in each place, and national model will unlikely capture the granularity of service provision and costs developed over time to best address needs in each place,” the response stated.

The scheme administrator will determine how producers pay fees to cover local authorities’ full net disposal costs for household packaging waste under EPR.

The Treasury has dictated that the administrator must be from the public sector. Defra announced last month that it is establishing an “interim” scheme administrator steering group for the UK’s EPR for packaging scheme (see letsrecycle.com story).

Defra said at the time the interim group will “support the design, establishment, and mobilisation of the packaging EPR scheme. It will play a critical role in the formation of the Scheme Administrator and future improvements in its design and development”.

Encouraged

Despite listing its concern over the scheme administrator, the LGA did say it welcomes ongoing discussions with Defra about the governance of the Scheme Administrator.

“While decisions on governance are outside the scope of this consultation, we hope that Defra will continue to work closely with the LGA and ensure that local government across the UK is properly represented in the overseeing body for the Scheme Administrator.”