Select Committee on Environmental Audit Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence


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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