Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-304)
MR ANDREW
PRICE AND
MR ROGER
HOCKNEY
WEDNESDAY 29 JANUARY
2003
300. Our history to date of landfill sites,
incinerators, whatever it may be, is that they mostly attract
public inquiries on top of all this process. I am sure the evidence
we have heard from the Environmental Services Association suggested
to me that they as private contractors are quite prepared, as
soon as they get the right framework, to bring forward these applications,
but it seems to me that the planning system is going to crumble
under this weight of public demand for full examination of those
applications.
(Mr Hockney) What I would say is that the planner
is in the difficult position of having to serve the applicant,
quite rightly, and the applications which are being made and having
also to take due account of the objections which come forward.
We live in an age when action groups and interest groups are highly
articulate, highly organised, have at their beck and call a substantial
amount of information through the internet and other electronic
sources. They also have the facility to explore the potential
for judicial review and other challenges. This means that the
planner is faced with trying to deliver planning permissions in
the face of a highly articulate opposition.
(Mr Price) Our central thesis is that the scale of
change which the waste management industry faces is something
we have recognised, understood and pressed the need for recognition
of for five, six or seven years now. We have been lobbying DoE
and its later forms over that sort of period. The planning system
works best where the development plan, in this case the waste
local plan, is in place and is identifying the locations where
known and agreed facilities should be provided. That is a situation
in which the industry can and should expect much greater confidence
about a successful outcome. What is wrong at the moment, it seems
to me, is that applications for waste schemes tend to attract
opposition, almost all types of waste application. The climate
in which applications are being considered is therefore unfavourable.
I do not think most are going to inquiries at all. Clearly incinerators
are probably in a different league altogether, because they are
profoundly disliked by the general public. My local plan in Dorset
was developed in the early 1990s, for example, and was premised
on the need to continue with landfill at that stage and identified
sites which could be used for those purposes. Those sites have
gone through the system and got their planning consents. What
we could not do was to get any guidance at all on what new waste
management facilities ought to be being provided. There is silence
on this issue. This is one of our main criticisms of waste strategy
2000 and indeed government policy. It is putting all the emphasis
on early recycling and composting achievement, which is fine and
we all understand the need for that, but it is then silent on
how to close the gap between what you are allowed to landfill
and what else you need to recover above the recycling targets.
301. There is a process now with a Planning
Bill going through this House and we have had a Green Paper on
planning. Have you as a society made any specific recommendations
or requests of government for changes to meet this challenge?
(Mr Price) The Planning Officers' Society, of which
we are a part—we are from the Minerals and Waste Topic Group—has
made very active recommendations in relation to the planning system.
The minerals and waste planning system is slightly different to
conventional planning and has been treated in a different way.
Whereas the new local development frameworks will be prepared
in future at district/borough/unitary level, minerals and waste
are staying at the high level of county and/or unitary. We believe
that is a necessary reflection of the need for a more strategic
view and more unified areas of common interest where an issue
which is of strategic importance, like new waste management facilities,
can be appropriately tackled.
302. We have been discussing—and it is
one of the criticisms of waste 2000 as well—municipal waste,
household waste, which is much the same thing perhaps, and all
the issues of commercial waste, industrial waste, hazardous waste
as well. What actions do you think are necessary in that particular
field within the planning system? You said that they do not all
go to public inquiries, but once co-disposal finishes and you
start talking about it being a hazardous waste site, then people
are going to start to feel a little differently, are they not?
(Mr Price) We are heading for problems on hazardous
waste.
(Mr Hockney) What I would say is that the planning
system is seeking to deliver and I think it is doing a pretty
good job at the moment. Reference has been made to the ODPM statistics
in 2001-02 and something in the region of 1,000 waste planning
applications were decided, of which 90 % were permitted and only
10 % refused. I suspect the 10 % which were refused would in part
have gone to appeal anyway and there would have been decisions
by the Secretary of State. One cannot put one's finger on one
particular reason why the planning system appears to be operating
in a convoluted way. There are various reasons why that is the
case: the complexity of the application, the issues of public
awareness, delays in responses from statutory consultees, the
appeal process itself can be convoluted, the issues related to
the resourcing of the planning system itself all add up to a situation
where the waste planner is under siege.
(Mr Price) Above all it is the context in which this
work is going on. There is a public attitude which is unhelpful.
No-one wants waste activities happening near them. It is quite
interesting, is it not, that you see a very popular level of support
in principle for recycling activity, especially where systems
are made as easy as possible for people to use and indeed waste
collection is probably one of the more popular local services;
the dustbin is taken away from the back door and people are very
happy to see that as the end of the story. The problem we have
is that we do have a throwaway society, which is increasing its
rates of waste generation in an unacceptable way. We do have to
transform public attitudes in terms of practice. We do have to
see resource management as a crucial component of waste management.
Above all, there has to be some clear messages coming out, and
this is a responsibility which is identified in the Strategy Unit's
paper as something which needs to be happening, at a national
level around waste management and its environmental and health
impacts for all sorts of different options in the waste management
field.
Sue Doughty
303. We touched on the major problems of public
perception about waste management and the difficulty it gives
planners. Do you think public perceptions would be altered if
the Government and the Environment Agency were really giving more
information about risks, about their views of the different options
you have when you are considering your local waste plan and then
putting forward a planning application for whatever plant or mechanism
you are looking at to deliver the plan?
(Mr Hockney) Some time ago I was confronted with an
irate audience at a public meeting in my county of Leicestershire
when there was a proposal for a landfill site. One of the members
of the audience actually stood up and pointed at me and said,
"We don't want your waste in our area". That sums it
up in a nutshell. It was not their waste, it was now the county
council's waste. Once that waste had gone into the dustbin and
they had paid their council tax, it was out of sight and forgotten
about. What we have to do is turn this situation round, that the
public have to own the problem and they certainly do not own the
problem at the moment. I can only draw parallels with the sorts
of campaigns the Government has run in the past, whether it has
been the anti-smoking campaigns or drink driving campaigns. We
really do need a concerted national awareness campaign, led by
the Government up front, backed by all the interest bodies as
well, whether it be the Environment Agency, ESA, local government,
if we are going to try to turn this particular perception around.
At the moment, we find ourselves in a situation where we are stumbling
along. We are stumbling along because we have not got that support
from the public.
304. May I interrupt because I do understand
the point you are making there? I am interested in one other thing.
You touched earlier and other speakers touched on the perception
of different risks and whether the information is accurate or
inaccurate, whether the public really understands the relative
risks of different waste management solutions, in other words,
would it be better if we had an agreed benchmark where we said
these are the relevant pros and cons of each type of waste management?
(Mr Hockney) Yes, we agree entirely. We believe the
Government need to take a lead here and to explain the relative
risks of various types of waste management process. It would assist
us, particularly through the appeal process and indeed the decision-making
process of planning applications, to have some firm information.
We have to deal with an awful lot of debate and an awful lot of
supposition through either the planning application process or
the public inquiry process.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. That is
very clear and very helpful indeed. Thank you both for coming
along this afternoon.
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