Select Committee on Public Accounts Twenty-Fifth Report


Summary


176 million tonnes of waste are produced by households and industry in England and Wales each year. The waste processing and disposal industry employs some 90,000 people and has an annual turnover exceeding £4 billion. Waste represents a potential health risk and irresponsible handling of waste can cause adverse environmental effects such as pollution, litter, smells and unsightliness.

The Environment Agency (the Agency) currently spends £78 million a year regulating the production, movement, recycling, treatment and disposal of waste. It sets standards, issues licences and registers operators, inspects waste facilities and takes action against breaches and offences. Nearly half of this spending is funded by the waste industry through licence fees. The remainder is funded by grant-in-aid from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (the Department) and the National Assembly for Wales.

On the basis of a Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General,[1] we took evidence from the Agency and the Department on the regulation of waste in England. We draw the following main conclusions from our examination:

  • Since taking over from 83 separate authorities in 1996, the Agency has become a single organisation of some 10,500 people, and a budget of £760 million. It has provided consistent and professional waste regulation across the country. The Agency is, nevertheless, still required to work within detailed guidance from the Department governing, for example, the targeting of its site inspections and the circumstances in which it can refuse a licence application, a situation which takes insufficient account of the Agency's experience and resources. The Department and the Agency should therefore consider revising their respective responsibilities, giving the Agency greater scope to implement legislation, propose draft regulations and decide operational matters to best achieve objectives set by the Department, with the Department retaining its key role in advising Ministers, negotiating with Europe and co-ordinating environmental issues across government.
  • Waste sites and activities vary in the hazard they pose to the public and the environment. European directives require higher risk sites and activities to be licensed while exempting lower risk activities. Current Departmental guidance and regulations, however, exempts some sites which pose risks to the environment and requires other activities such as some waste recycling and recovery activities to be licensed even though they present little risk. The Department needs to review the boundaries between exempt and licensed sites and on the basis of risk to the public and environment, simplify the licensing of sites posing an intermediate level of risk, for example by developing standard permits.
  • In 2000-01, significant or major pollution incidents involving waste occurred at just 218 out of the 7,700 licensed waste sites. Nevertheless, the Agency aimed to carry out some 120,000 inspections a year of licensed waste sites and activities, an average of 15 visits to each licensed site and a minimum of 4 for any one site. The Agency should carry out fewer routine inspections, substituting more in depth inspection of sites posing greatest risk. In assessing the relative risks of sites, the Agency should consider the adequacy of the operator's own compliance regimes.

In granting new licences, the Agency effectively operates a presumption, based on Departmental guidance, against refusing licences to applicants who have been convicted for environmental offences at other waste sites. This presumption can hinder the Agency's ability to make operators remedy persistent breaches of their licence conditions. The Department's guidance should therefore make clear that there is no such presumption and require operators with a record of poor waste management to demonstrate how they have remedied past deficiencies before allowing them to expand or continue their businesses.



1   C&AG's Report, Protecting the Public from Waste (HC 156, Session 2002-03) Back


 
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