Examination of witnesses (Questions 94
- 99)
TUESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 1999
DR MARION
CARTER, MR
DIRK HAZELL
and MR GRAHAM
WATSON
Chairman
94. Welcome to the second session of the Committee's
inquiry into the work of the Environment Agency. Could I ask you
to identify yourselves for the record, please?
(Mr Hazell) Thank you very much indeed, Chairman.
My name is Dirk Hazell. I am the Chief Executive of the Environmental
Services Association. On my right is Dr Marion Carter who is the
Managing Director of M J Carter Associates, one of the leading
consultancies providing technical advice to the waste management
industry. Dr Carter is also a Director of the Environmental Services
Association and a Director of ENTRUST. On my left is Mr Graham
Watson, the Environment Director of Hanson Waste Management, one
of the country's five top waste management companies. He is also
a Director of the Environmental Services Association Research
Trust and he is a Committee member of the Environmental Services
Association.
95. Thank you very much. Do you want to say
anything by way of introduction or are you happy for us to go
straight into questions on the evidence you have already submitted?
(Mr Hazell) I think we will take your lead, Chairman.
Mr Cummings
96. I understand that membership of the ESA
is on a voluntary basis.
(Mr Hazell) Yes.
97. Can you tell the Committee what percentage
of the industry you represent?
(Mr Hazell) It is 80 per cent of the industry. 80
per cent of our members are also in fact small- and medium-sized
enterprises. The industry is equivalent to half a per cent of
GDP.
98. Who regulates and advises the other 20 per
cent who are not members of the Association?
(Mr Hazell) All firms undertaking regulated activity
are regulated by the Agency. We are not a regulator, we are a
trade association.
99. How much progress has been made in the criticism
of the Agency which was made by this Committee in its Report on
Sustainable Waste Management?
(Mr Hazell) I think Dr Carter wishes to lead on that.
(Dr Carter) You made a number of recommendations in
your previous report. One of the main recommendations was on training
at all levels and auditing of the training. Sadly, we have to
say that we see little evidence of substantial progress in this
matter. The lack of progress we think is exacerbated by the high
turnover of staff at site level and it is the absence of training
and general lack of skills in waste management which is an underlying
problem which the industry thinks leads to many of the difficulties
we experience. The Agency recently has been making efforts to
improve the situation, but this is three and a half years on from
when they were formed and 18 months on from your report. The waste
industry have put forward a placement scheme where we take Environment
Agency staff on to sites. They take four one-week periods in order
to gain experience. We have piloted the scheme. Three people have
been through it so far. We are hoping that it will be expanded
and we will get about 100 people through in the next year, but
you will appreciate that putting people on sites is quite a difficult
task and it is not going to train a lot of people very quickly.
I contrast this with the situation in the waste industry where,
as you know, operators have had to train staff to obtain their
certificates of technical competence, where in four years we have
trained 1,400 people, they have completed their courses and we
will have 5,000 COTCs in the next five years. We think that the
lack of progress in training is one of our major issues and we
would like to see a focused effort to concentrate training very
quickly. In addition to the secondments that we are doing at the
moment we would like to see the Environment Agency institute very
quickly a concentrated programme for their operational staff.
One of your other recommendations was that there should be representation
of the industry on the Agency Board and again we are sad to report
that despite the fact that we have put two people forward at the
last change in the Agency Board, neither of our recommendations
went forward and we still feel that there is no real understanding
of the waste industry at Board level in the Agency.
(Mr Watson) There was also a recommendation in respect
of OPRA and the application of risk-based appraisals in the waste
management sector. I think universally the industry has accepted
that as being very positive. I think it recognises that OPRA-based
principles have worked particularly in HMIP in terms of air quality
regulation. I think we would serve a couple of cautionary notes.
There is perhaps the danger that OPRA may fall into the same criticism
banding as tick box based regulation. The trial application of
OPRA on some of the industry sites has been on the basis of a
scoring system and there are concerns with some of our operators
that the scoring is not about diverting agencies' precious resource
into where we think it is needed, it is more about redistributing
the existing inspections around the same number of sites. So you
may get the same number of sites visited more frequently. We would
like to see OPRA embrace issues such as EMAS and ISO14000. At
the moment we think some of the criteria for OPRA pays lip service
to some of those important principles which can lead us towards
more self-regulation.
Chairman: I think we will come back to OPRA
a bit later on.
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