Speaking at the launch of the trust’s fifth annual report at the House of Lords, John Cutner, director of Onyx Environmental Trust, said that although the reform of the LTCS has removed funding from Category C and CC projects – those involving sustainable waste management and recycling – the trust's work would continue.
“The good news is the government hasn’t abandoned the scheme entirely,” Mr Cutner said.
He explained that although the reforms have taken two thirds of the LTCS funding, work improving communities near landfill sites was still important. In many of these projects, a relatively small grant can go a long way, he said, with 40 of the trust’s projects involving communities with in 10 miles of landfill sites needing less than 10,000 each.
The trust's annual report showed that a total of almost 6.3 million was granted to 68 projects in 2002. This means that over the five years the trust has been established, it has distributed a total of 21 million to 308 community projects.
Sustainable waste management projects funded by the trust in 2002 included a 25,785 grant for the BedZED Community Composting Scheme in Beddington, showing how community composting can be effective in urban areas and the Brumcan waste awareness project, spreading the waste minimisation message through different ethnicities in Birmingham.
These kind of projects will no longer receive funding from the trust after the LTCS reforms, but funding for projects in other categories – those involving the reclamation of land, prevention of pollution, improvement to public amenities and the restoration of buildings – will continue.
The trust's chairman, Professor Lord Lewis explained: “The suggested modifications in the dispersion of the Landfill Tax monies does, however, maintain approximately one third of the Tax to be used for the other categories of awards. This is similar to the present scale of funding for these particular areas of support and so the present scheme and arrangements will continue.”
The full details of the LTCS reform is still to be released by the government in its response to the Strategy Unit's waste review expected in May. The LTCS regulator, ENTRUST, has said it will be looking into the criticisms of the LTCS raised by the government's report.
“We need to refer back to the original founding values,” Roger Hyde, chief executive of LTCS regulators ENTRUST, told those present at the Onyx Environmental Trust event. “It was created on a political whim and it can be removed on a political whim. It’s up to you to prove its worth.”
The government has said the LTCS successor will have to see more transparency so that waste companies are not seen to be benefiting from the Landfill Tax money involved.
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