London Mayor set to work with Recycling Board

And, significant changes in the structure of the proposed London Waste and Recycling Board (LWRB) are also expected. A major task of the Board, besides giving policy advice, is to run the £19 million London Waste and Recycling Fund which is due to allocate money for projects in London during the current financial year.

Previous Mayor Ken Livingstone had refused to take part in the work of the Board or the Fund but it is now expected that Boris Johnson will give it his support – in his manifesto the new Mayor said he wanted to work more closely with the boroughs.

Recently some progress has been made in setting up the LWRB with the appointment of a shadow committee consisting of four councillors and two non-elected representatives.

Councillors

The councillors have been appointed by the London Councils organisation under the auspices of the Government Office for London. On the shadow committee are two Conservatives – Daniel Moylan (Kensington & Chelsea) and David Williams (Merton); one Labour, Clyde Loakes (Waltham Forest); and one LibDem, Colin Hall (Sutton). All will have a say in where the £19 million fund is spent – and potentially on more money if some extra is put in by the Mayor.

But, no chairman has been appointed and Defra ministers have stalled the Parliamentary procedure needed to set the Board up. Recycling minister Joan Ruddock still needs to lay an Order before Parliament creating the Board but now is expected to delay until after talks that will take place between the London Councils organisation and the Mayor.

A spokesman for London councils told letsrecycle.com: “London Councils chairman Merrick Cockell will be talking to the Mayor of London to see what involvement he wants with the Waste and Recycling Board.”

Delay

The delay means that London boroughs seeking money from the £19 million fund may not know until later in the second half of the current financial year whether they have been successful.

This is because the Order creating the Board may not be laid until late June although Defra is thought keen to lay it before the summer Parliamentary recess.

Attention is also focussing on the waste section within the Mayor's Office. Ken Livingstone had the experienced environment officer John Duffy as his adviser. It is understood that the former Mayor's 10 advisers, including Mr Duffy, are now on “gardening leave” and Mr Johnson is in the process of appointing his own team.

It is likely that waste will form part of the environment portfolio of a member of his new team. The new adviser is expected to be influential in how a revised waste policy for London is developed by the new Mayor. The revision process had already started under Ken Livingstone but has not been put out for consultation.

Regional

One major issue will the question of regional self-sufficency for waste, as originally proposed in the 2000 Waste Strategy.

At a national level in the 2007 Waste Strategy, the government stepped back from a policy of regional self-sufficiency, allowing waste to be treated away from where it is produced. Ken Livingstone was firm in his view that London should handle its own waste and was especially keen to stop the landfilling of London's waste in the Home Counties. He was also strongly opposed to incineration.

Mr Livingstone won the support of the Conservative shire counties for this policy and as a Conservative himself, Boris Johnson is seen by some observers as facing something of a dilemma over this issue.