WRAP overhaul set to create 5.7m in efficiency savings

 

The rationalisation will result in £5.7m efficiency savings over two years

 
Steve Creed, WRAP

Steve Creed, director of business growth at WRAP, revealed at the latest meeting of Defra's Waste Strategy Board that giving WRAP leadership of the six other resource efficiency bodies funded by the department is expected to offer efficiency savings of £5.7 million over two years.

This is dwarfed by both WRAP's £57.7 million expenditure in 2008/09 and the £57.8 million that Defra provided in total funding for WRAP and the six other resource efficiency bodies in 2008/09, of which the vast majority (£43.2 million) went to WRAP itself.

WRAP is set to be put in charge of delivering the government's resource efficiency programme, taking control of bodies including Envirowise and the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), from April 2010 (see letsrecycle.com story).

Mr Creed told the Board that rationalisation benefits identified so far were “limited to obvious areas of synergies and benefits-of-scale in largely back-office functions such as marketing, PR, admin, some IT.”

He added that most of the benefits from the changes “will be delivered from synergies obtained from rationalising and merging programmes of work amongst the delivery bodies.”

Mr Creed claimed that the creation of a single resource efficiency delivery would be “able to provide simple inclusive low effort points of entry/access, consistent high quality advice and effective outcomes”.

Spending

Defra's seven resource efficiency bodies have already gone through significant cuts in their funding from the department, seeing their support cut by as much as 40% in 2008/09 (see letsrecycle.com story).

And, at last month's meeting, the Board's members – which include representatives from Defra, the Environment Agency, the Treasury, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Cabinet Office – raised the sceptre of further limits on WRAP's finance.

The Board said the forthcoming government spending review setting departmental budgets for 2011-14 “would impact on the future of WRAP” and as such should be considered as a “risk” to the Board's programme, which is to ensure the implementation of measures outlined in the Waste Strategy 2007.

Focus

At the meeting it was also revealed that energy from waste is set to be at the top of Defra's agenda for its new resource efficiency body, alongside areas such as resource minimisation, business resource efficiency, recovered material markets and reducing waste to landfill -which WRAP has focused on in the past.

And, the minutes reveal that “the fact that WRAP would be focusing more on energy from waste was welcomed”.

While WRAP has undertaken work on some methods of recovering energy from waste in the past – such as anaerobic digestion – this has been quite limited to date.

The Waste Strategy Board was set up to oversee the implementation of the Waste Strategy for England 2007, and includes representatives from Defra, the Environment Agency, Treasury, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Cabinet Office.