South East waste management capacity will run out in 2010

The Assembly held a Regional Waste Summit on Tuesday, as it submitted its Regional Waste Management Strategy to the government.

”There is a need to clarify the overall need for facilities nationally – this is primarily a matter for DEFRA. “
– Lester Hicks, ODPM
The Strategy proposes changes to regional planning guidance (RPG 9), pushing councils in the South East to recycle 40% of all waste by 2010 and 60% by 2025.

The Strategy says over 380 new waste management facilities will be needed to meet its recycling and landfill diversion targets. And, the need for new waste management facilities is so great in the region that new plants will need to be sited in the countryside, Mr Payne said.

“We need political leadership to deliver these facilities,” Mr Payne said.

“In 2010, the capacity (for dealing with waste in the South East) starts to be less than the waste that needs to be managed. And, landfill will run out more quickly if the diversion and recovery is slower than forecast,” he warned.

Clarity
The Summit saw an official from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister calling on another government department – DEFRA – to provide more clarity in the national requirement for waste facilities in order to help planners.

Lester Hicks, divisional manager in the OPDM's Minerals and Waste Planning Division, said: “There is a need to clarify the overall need for facilities nationally – this is primarily a matter for DEFRA: we in Planning can't do anything without talking to the department responsible for waste.”

Mr Hicks said that in the South East, 800 permissions would be needed in the next 11 years to get the waste infrastructure required – an average of 73 decisions a year.

The OPDM official called on councils to take on their share of the burden of new waste plants and denounced councillors who looked to garner political support by opposing new waste facilities.

But Peter Raine, Kent county council's director of strategic planning, warned that it could be “total political suicide for any politician to get a waste plant on their patch”. But he added: “We must deal with this rationally, not by weighing up the objections. Let's try to de-politicise this.”