Larac, the local authority recycling officers' organisation in England and Wales, announced earlier this week that its vice-chair Mrs Westmoreland, manager for the environment for Kirklees Metropolitan Council, will become its new chair. Mrs Westmoreland will replace Paul Deakin, who is leaving North Dorset following a restructuring within the authority.
Mrs Westmoreland told letsrecycle.com of the significant changes that will take place within Larac. She said: “It is pretty clear that we need to stand back and take a look at where we want to go as things in the industry are changing and there will be more changes ahead.”
One of the first things that Mrs Westmoreland said she will do when she takes over in January is organise an away-day session for the executive to re-assess the priorities of the organisation.
She said: “Waste management is fairly high priority again which is making local authorities look very carefully at it. Larac therefore needs to provide support for recycling officers and create a network to enable recycling officers to share information and ideas.”
Larac will start to look at how it can become more of an information and support organisation and will move away from its training role which it has concentrated on in the past. Larac will be talking to its members to see how the organisation can best serve its needs. Mrs Westmoreland said: “We will be talking to people and early next year we will be looking to see how we can do more.”
Mrs Westmoreland's role with Larac for the last three years has been a training and development one but now the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) will take up the training element of Larac's work. Larac will still liaise with WRAP and Mrs Westmoreland said she was confident that they will develop a programme that will meet the needs of recycling officers.
Register for free to comment