Examination of Witnesses (Questions 293-299)
MR ANDREW
PRICE AND
MR ROGER
HOCKNEY
WEDNESDAY 29 JANUARY
2003
Chairman
293. Welcome. You have had the advantage of
hearing some of your predecessors give their evidence, which may
be of some advantage to you in that we probably have no need to
cover some of the issues which we raised with them. Nonetheless,
thank you for your memorandum which was very useful indeed and
very good, if I may say so. Is there anything you would like to
add to that report before we begin to cross-examine you?
(Mr Price) We are happy to start, thank
you.
Mr Jones
294. Why have there been difficulties in getting
adequate data from the Environment Agency for planning purposes?
(Mr Price) A number of reasons. One of the two key
issues I can probably identify as being adequate resourcing of
the Agency in order to do its fundamental tasks. Its key responsibilities
in relation to waste are first, regulation in relation to licensing,
and second, the provision of data. The data systems have historically
never been in place in this country in a way which effectively
gathers together the information. The Agency are struggling to
do their best and have published a round of strategic waste management
assessments for each region. There is a need for that work to
be carried forward. Key issues would be, in particular, the need
for industrial and commercial waste data, which in this country
is lamentable. At the moment we rely on a single survey which
was done in 1998-99, which was based on the sample of some 20,000
firms of widely varying sizes. That information has yet to be
repeated, although I gather a survey is now to be carried out
in the next year; I do not know the basis on which that will happen.
295. The data just is not good enough.
(Mr Price) No, it is not good enough. Let me qualify
that by saying that within local authority circles for what is
called municipal waste, predominantly household waste, that data
is now quite good.
296. What is the role of the RTABs in providing
this data?
(Mr Price) The RTABs should, through the Agency, being
a component part of a RTAB, be drawing on that as a source. I
did chair the RTAB in the South West for the first two and a half
years of its life and in those days the strategic waste management
assessment had yet to be published. We made it our first priority
to try to gather together, for example, all the household information
that we were in the process of building at that stage.
297. Are the RTABs entirely reliant or largely
reliant on the Environment Agency for data?
(Mr Price) They should be. The key role of the Environment
Agency is the provision of data for planning purposes. I have
not quite finished the answer to your first question. There are
difficulties with the way in which the Agency itself collects
information, for example they do not have information on activities
which are exempt from their own licensing systems. That is quite
significant in relation to construction and demolition waste for
example, or indeed some composting activities. For planning purposes
there is a need for information on things like the composition
of waste, which is not readily forthcoming, other than perhaps
household, where the local authority sector is able to provide
it. There is a wide range of issues here.
298. Are the RTABs being effective in supporting
the work of waste planning authorities?
(Mr Price) They have yet to prove their worth. No
RTAB has yet got to a definitive position. The North West has
got further than most. It is wrestling with the controversy which
surrounds the findings they came up with. Most RTABs are now,
partly through the injection of some belated funding from the
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, employing consultants to
do their best with the available data and to help the RTABs themselves
develop the policy and strategy at the regional level. There are
many other things I could say about that, but regional policy
is something which is being developed through technical and advisory
bodies, which is what the RTABs are, that is information and advice
which goes to a political set-up of some kind, a regional assembly
or chamber or whatever it is. Some modification may take place
at that stage. It is important to understand that at the present
point in time the region is not a democratically accountable statutory
based organisation. The powers to develop local policy and strategy
and to implement waste management practice rest with local authorities.
There is a tension and an issue here. I heard what was said by
the ESA about their confidence and the importance they place on
regional planning. I would have to say, coming from the South
West as I do, that I believe that is not necessarily the most
appropriate level. Really it is a sub-regional issue in an area
like the South West, which extends from the Scillies almost up
to the Midlands and across to Hampshire. We have a very large
region, with a number of substantial urban centres, widely separated
by large tracts of rural countryside. It is what happens in different
parts of the region which matters rather than what happens in
the region as a whole. There is a place for regional guidance,
which is about encouragement and lifting standards and setting
targets and objectives, but the resolution of policy, in what
way it is taken forward, is something which is more appropriately
determined by groupings of local authorities.
Mr Thomas
299. We hear from the Environmental Services
Association that we are going to need new facilities to deal with
the Landfill Directive over the next few years. I have done a
quick calculation on their evidence and it gives us at least 700
new such facilities. How on earth can we cope with that in the
current planning system?
(Mr Hockney) The simplistic answer to the question
is that the planning framework can only deal with planning applications
which are made. From the planners' point of view, they are at
least in part in a reactive position, dealing with the planning
applications which come forward. Those applications will only
come forward if the industry and its partners are confident that
there is a commercial need for those proposals. To widen out the
issue, I am sure the Committee are aware that the land use planning/development
plan system requires the preparation of the policy plans in the
first instance and the determination of planning applications
against the policy plans. In this case, currently we are dealing
with the waste local plan process. The waste local plan process
has been up and running for a limited number of years now and
the statistics I have received from ODPM, indicate that something
in the region of 50 % of the county councils who are dealing with
waste local plans now have a waste local plan in place. I would
be the first to say to you that that is not a particularly good
record: five out of 10 is not a very good score. Until we get
those waste local plans or their successors in place, it is difficult
then to determine planning applications against the waste plan
policies. We then move into the murky area of how to develop waste
local plans when, as has been indicated by ESA and we would support
the situation, we are not getting a clear steer from government
on what the Government sees as the waste framework. The waste
planner in many ways is a besieged individual, trying to produce
waste local planning policy when the tools the plan has got are
somewhat limited. The lead time for the waste local plan process,
given a fair wind, is quite long. On top of that you have the
need to make the planning applications against the waste planning
policy. My long answer to you has been that I am not sure we can
build enough, given the inhibitions that the waste planning process
is faced with at the moment.[12]
12 Mr Hockney later added that the waste planning
process is subject to the procedures laid down in law, together
with Government Guidance, Government Waste Policy and the potential
for judicial review. Action by Government to resolve or clarify
these "inhibitions" would ensure that the land use planning
system was speedier. Back
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