The announcement came as the government published its response to the latest round of consultation on the forthcoming Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme, which will begin for English councils on April 1, 2005.
The Scheme will see waste disposal authorities (WDAs) given allowances for the amount of biodegradable material they will be able to landfill each year up to 2020. Councils will be able to trade landfill allowances with other councils if they have them spare, or if they expect to be in a position where they will have to landfill more than their allocation of allowances.
Commenting on the latest government policy announcement, environment minister Elliot Morley told Parliament: “The government will allocate a decreasing number of allowances for each waste disposal authority in England for each year between 2005 and 2020. Authorities can then choose to trade these with other authorities.”
The 200 per tonne penalty for landfilling more than allowances permit relates to about four times the average cost of landfill, the government said. Although some councils wanted to defer the penalty aspect of the LATS for the first year, Defra said it would not be practical to run the scheme without penalties.
As well as penalties for exceeding landfill allowances, the government said if England fails to meet its Landfill Directive targets, it is reserving the right to pass on some or all of the fines from Europe to those WDAs that have failed. Defra stressed that WDAs that keep within their allowance levels will not receive fines.
Allocation
Defra, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said that it will allocate WDAs with allowances at the start of the scheme for all years up to 2020, based on 2001/02 data.
The government said it understood some council concerns that setting allowances at the start of the scheme would not take account of growing populations or boundary changes, but stressed the importance of certainty in the LATS system.
It had suggested that in the first year of operation of the trading scheme, the government would allocate sufficient allowances so WDAs would not need any reduction in landfilling for that first year. But because the start of the LATS has been delayed by one year until April 2005, Defra said “the government considers it appropriate to require a (landfill) reduction in the first year of the scheme”.
Nationally, Defra has said the total amount of allowances going out to WDAs will mean a diversion in the years between 2005 and 2010 of 10%, 15%, 20%, 25% and 30%. This will see a total landfilling of about 14 million tonnes cut to about 11 million tonnes according to the Defra report.
The allocation sees a “back-end loading” of the trajectory, with large increases in diversion in 2007/08 and 2008/09, which the government intends to help councils needing time to bring waste management facilities online. The government said it would save 125 million over four years compared to a straight-line trajectory.
Defra said that the allocations of landfill allowances for individual WDAs would be published “as early as possible in 2004”.
WDAs will be able to “bank” as many allowances as they like for use in future years, but the government is setting a 5% limit on the number of allowances they can “borrow” from future years' allocations.
Convergence
Looking ahead, the government said that by 2010 it wants to see a convergence of WDA performance. Those councils landfilling a small amount of material in the early years of the scheme would therefore receive increasing amounts of landfill allowances up to the convergence point, the government said.
It said that increasing amounts of allowances for these high performing WDAs would not see them landfilling more because financially they would be better off by selling the surplus allowances. By allowing the increase of allowances, Defra said it was also ensuring flexibility to the allowances market, giving those councils that need it the chance to purchase extra allowances.
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