APPENDIX 6
Letter to the Clerk of the Committee from
Andy Doran, Chair of the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee
( LARAC)
Many thanks for your letter of 31 July 2003
requesting comment on the draft Government response to your committee's
findings. Please accept my apologies that due to pressure of work
these comments are briefer than I would have liked, but I hope
that they convey the basic views of LARAC to the Government's
response.
I recall from the evidence to your committee
earlier in the year and the subsequent report that there was a
sense that Government was not tackling the complex waste agenda
with sufficient rigour or determination. Therefore, LARAC was
very much in support of the recommendations contained within the
Committee's report. Looking at the Government response it is disappointing
that this seems to be largely in a defensive tone from a Government
seeking to justify past actions rather than one willing to embrace
the advice of the committee and move forward.
There is considerable reliance in the Government
response on the analysis of the Government's Strategy Unit report
and yet almost a year on from the publication of this report there
has been little meaningful progress on many of the policy issues
discussed in that document, leaving waste far from the heart of
Government. The resignation and appointment of a new Environment
Minister has undoubtedly been a contributory factor in this slow
pace of change.
With regard to specifics it is disappointing
that Government makes no mention, in response to Recommendation
2 on waste minimisation, of work underway in the European Union
and the UK on Sustainable Resource and Sustainable Consumption
strategies. Especially with regard to waste minimisation many
people now agree that any changes to waste generation are locked
into changes to sustainable resource use and consumption patterns;
you cannot achieve one without the other and therefore it is hoped
that Government will address this aspect of joined-up government.
Given the recent and continued allocation of
capital funding for recycling through challenge funding LARAC
is more optimistic that national recycling targets are within
the grasp of the United Kingdom. However, it remains a fact that
many of the programmes cited in the Government response and attributed
to the WIP or WRAP (see recommendation 6) are only now being established.
In reality these programmes will not affect current practices
until next year 2004-05 and beyond.
LARAC also remains convinced that welcome though
the recent allocation of challenge (capital) funding is, Government
needs to do more (see recommendation 7) to support the ongoing
revenue needs of these new recycling schemes. Therefore, LARAC
is continuing to lobby for a revision of the outdated funding
formulae which are used to generate the annual revenue grant allocation
to authorities and which are predicated upon the "black sack,
collect and dispose" system of waste management and not the
highly complex multi-material integrated waste management services
that many LARAC Members provide. LARAC believes that we need a
funding system fit for the twenty-first century not the nineteenth
century, as is the current case.
Finally, LARAC is disappointed at the proposed
rate of change of Landfill Tax, having pledged in the Strategy
Unit report to make future increases in the tax cost neutral to
local authorities, LARAC would like to see this raised higher,
faster (recommendation 10). LARAC does not agree with Government
that the current proposals are bold or realistic enough to achieve
the change in practice that the Government wishes to see.
Many thanks for the opportunity to see the draft
Government response and I look forward to seeing the published
papers in due course.
September 2003
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