The Minister's comments came as the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs today (March 28) released details of how councils could obtain a share of the 140m. Mr Meacher told letsrecycle.com that the best use of the money would be to help the worst performing local authorities improve their recycling rate. The decision has been made despite criticism from local authority and community recyclers who said that they did not think the money should go to councils who had not made any efforts to increase their recycling rate in the past.
Mr Meacher said: “There is a huge variation in authorities recycling rates and there are far too many in the lower regions. We are not rewarding people for failing but we have to make a specific effort to make a step change. We are still rewarding high performers but we have got to focus on improving low performers and jack up levels.”
Slice
Announcing the fund, Mr Meacher invited local councils to bid for a slice of the 140million fund to help them meet their 25% recycling target by 2005/06. The UK has a current recycling rate of 10.5%. The money is to be distributed over two years. A total of 50 million (25 million each for capital and resource expenditure) available for projects during 2002/03. Some 90 million (50 million for capital and 40 million for resource expenditure) will be available for 2003/04. Further details can be seen at DEFRA – wastefund.
And Mr Meacher announced that 21.3 million has been set aside for London. The Minister said that the allocation is in accordance with the number of households in the capital compared with the rest of the UK. Mr Meacher explained that he decided to give London its own fund because he agreed with the Mayor of London, the Association of London government and London Waste Action's belief that they could get better value for money by working together. The money is to be distributed in two chunks. The first, 7.6 million, of which 3.8 million will be for capital expenditure and 3.8 million for resource expenditure is to be allocated during 2002/03. During 2003/04, London will be allocated 13.7 million, of which 7.61 million will be for capital expenditure and 6.09 million for resource expenditure.
Challenge
For the rest of the UK, the money is to be distributed on a challenge-basis. The government said that the fund is not large enough to distribute equally to the 400 local authorities in England. And by using a challenge formula, it should be possible to prioritise areas where a big turnaround in performance is needed if the UK is to attain longer term recycling targets. Mr Meacher said that a regional allocation is not practical as there are no formal structures in pace to administer the fund.
Continued on page 2
Register for free to comment