Examination of Witnesses (Questions 64-79)
DR ANDREW
SKINNER, MR
MARTIN BROCKLEHURST
AND MR
ARWYN JONES
25 MARCH 2004
Q64 Chairman: Good morning. My apologies
for the delay in starting this session. Thank you for coming.
Thank you also for your memorandum and particular thanks to Mr
Brocklehurst who I understand has come at very short notice indeed.
Your memorandum focuses very heavily on fly-tipping and you will
not be surprised that that is the issue we really want to major
on with you this morning. I notice that your memorandum says that
the illegal dumping of waste accounted in 2002 for 14% of the
serious pollution incidents which you have dealt with. Could you
give us some idea of whether that proportion is greater or lesser
than in previous years—that is, what the trend is.
Dr Skinner: Yes, certainly, Chairman.
Thank you for the invitation to come here. Before I answer the
question specifically, could I just make a comment: I think we
will probably use the word "fly-tipping" quite a lot
in this discussion and one of the concerns we have put into the
paper is that it does tend to under-describe the nature of the
issue, both its acceptability under the law and also its scale,
so I am pleased that you have used the word "illegal dumping"
because in fact that is what we are really talking about, particularly
as you are talking to the Agency, and under our agreement with
local authorities that is the kind of "high end of the market"
that we deal with. So, yes, it is an important factor in the interests
we deal with, and it is on the increase. As a proportion of serious
incidents across the whole spectrum, it is not such a dramatic
increase over previous years but Martin Brocklehurst will give
you more detail on the figures.
Mr Brocklehurst: If we look at
the numbers we have, which is incidents reported to the Environment
Agency: 2001-02 was a 19% increase overall for all incidents and
2002-03 was a further 5% increase for all incidents. Then if we
look at the proportion of incidents involving hazardous waste,
for 2002 it was 14% and for 2003 it remained roughly at 14%; however,
the number of category 1 and category 2 incidents (the more serious
hazardous waste incidents) between 2001 and 2002 doubled. We are
still working through the data for 2003 to calculate the category
1 and 2 incidents for that year as well. The indications that
we have is that overall the number of hazardous waste incidents—if
we take all the categories of incidents—have remained roughly
around the 14% number but the percentage of those that were serious
is increasing.
Q65 Chairman: Presumably with the new
arrangements of the ending of co-disposal, you anticipate that
that problem may be about to take a leap for the worse.
Mr Brocklehurst: Clearly, as we
are working with Defra on the consequences of the end of co-disposal,
there is a concern that we have that that problem could deteriorate
in the next few months. We are clearly working to try to prevent
that occurring, with proposals in place to monitor and work with
the producers in particular of the more difficult hazardous waste
streams. They roughly break down to 20% coming from oil and oil
related products, 20% coming from construction and demolition
materials, and about another 7% and 14% respectively for inorganics
and organics. With the inorganics and the organics, which mainly
come from the chemical industry, the industry is well geared up
to deal with the consequences of the change. We would not expect
to see major problems in that area. For oils and oily sludges,
most of that material is currently burnt, so this year we would
not expect to see major problems for that area. That leaves construction
and demolition waste as the prime target, where 92% of the material
of hazardous construction waste is currently landfilled. That
is the area on which we are concentrating because that is the
most difficult area as we move into this change in the way hazardous
waste is managed.
Q66 Chairman: You say you have a string
of proposals in place. Those are proposals to Defra, are they?
Mr Brocklehurst: No, these are
active proposals to work with the industry to ensure that all
the key players are aware of the change and are putting plans
in place to be able to manage the transition.
Q67 Chairman: And the industry is responding
positively to this?
Mr Brocklehurst: We are working
closely with them at this stage, yes.
Q68 Chairman: Are there budgetary implications
for you?
Dr Skinner: There are budget implications
in two respects. One is the regulatory duties that fall upon us
with the changes of the regime, but these are ones which are covered
because that is a regulatory activity which has an income stream
financed through the charges that people pay. The concern is that
the activity we are talking about this morning is not funded by
that same route; it comes through our grant-in-aid funding which
you will know very well is under very heavy pressure. It does
not only apply to the hazardous waste, it applies to a number
of policy areas in waste, where, rightly and with our strong support,
the regulatory processes are being tightened and sending cost
pressures into industry. We expect that these will lead to an
increase in illegal activity. That is where there is a funding
gap, between what we expect us and local authorities to be called
upon to do and also doing it, because it is not funded in the
same way as the legitimate activity is.
Q69 Chairman: Could you give us an idea
of the scale of the funding?
Dr Skinner: We told your Committee
last year about the proposals we had put forward to Defra for
the kind of scale increase in activity that we thought was commensurate
with the threat. We mentioned a start-up cost of £14 million
and an annual running cost of £6 million. You were kind enough
in your report to support that scale of activity, and, indeed,
the Government in their response also acknowledged that that was
an appropriate issue for consideration. Those are the figures.
They still remain in play as we go into Spending Review 2004.
That is a matter of ongoing debate with government.
Q70 Chairman: Going back to the incidents
figures, you have referred already to the 19% increase we saw
to 2002 in the overall incidents, but what struck me was that
Thames, for example, saw a 73% increase in illegal dumping. Why
is it particularly bad in Thames? Or are there other areas where
you are seeing similar increases?
Dr Skinner: We have given you
what we call our "hot spots map". This is based on 2002
data, and we will be processing 2003 almost as we speak. This
very graphically demonstrates the nature and geographical
spread of the issues and just shows how the issue is dominant
in Thames. Indeed, the Environment Agency Board discussed this
issue yesterday and one of our board members described the London
area as the "armpit of the country" as far as fly-tipping
is concerned. It is a huge issue. It is partly because of the
scale of the industrial activity and construction activity in
the South East; it is partly a factor depending on the availability
of resources to deal with it legitimately and, it seems, because
we identify an increase in activity of what I call "organised
crime" in this area which seems to be particularly active
in the metropolis.
Q71 Chairman: So there are not other
areas with a scale of increase as bad as London.
Dr Skinner: No, there are no other
areas which have figures which are that graphic, although there
is more intense activity in most urban areas, as the map shows.
Q72 Chairman: When might you finish your
work on the 2003 figures and be able to present a comprehensive
picture for that year?
Mr Brocklehurst: Obviously we
started doing work on the 2003 figures as soon as the year ended.
We are very close now to finalising all the numbers from the 2003
data, so I would expect that within a month we will be able to
submit the final figures for 2003, fully verified, making sure
we have all the cases that have been investigated entered onto
the system.
Q73 Chairman: It would be very helpful
if you could—
Dr Skinner: We will try to expedite
that for you. Would you allow me to make a comment about data?
Although we are quoting these figures and we believe them to be
the best available, I think it is widely known that the data and
information around this issue is quite poor—and of course
we do commission at the end of this month the Flycapture
system which is going to do a number of really important things—but
I would hope that in future discussions on this issue in future
years we will have much better data and more certain data so that
policy can be much better informed than in current years.
Q74 Chairman: Could we talk about Flycapture.
It is encouraging to hear that it is on course for a launch on
1 April. What actually do you expect it to add to what you are
doing at the moment?
Mr Brocklehurst: Flycapture
contains essentially four areas of information: summary statistics;
registration of vehicles used (which is something that local authorities
were very keen to get on the system, so that if the same vehicle
is being used across different boroughs for the same activity
we will pick up the pattern); enforcement action taken; and costs
to the local authorities and ourselves in dealing with the incidents.
If you break that down and then you look at what the summary statistics
will tell us, it will tell us the type of waste that is deposited,
the type of land on which it is deposited and the size of the
deposit (so we will get some idea of volumes as well). On the
enforcement side, there is provision to understand whether the
enforcement activity leads to a formal caution, a fixed penalty
fine, a prosecution, a custodial sentence or community service.
On costs, for the smaller incidents we are going to use standardised
costs agreed with the local authorities to reduce the burden under
the system, and for the larger-scale incidents of more than one
20-tonne load we will put the actual costs in, and we will also
have data on the fines that are tied to the individual cases.
I think the issue there is quite an important one because fines
at the moment are running at around £2,000 an average for
the Agency's cases, which is disproportionate to the value people
involved in this activity can gain from that activity. Also, as
we have launched Flycapture out we now have 75% of the
local authorities signed on to use the system, so with 400 plus
local authorities there are still only outstanding 114 and we
are working hard to get all of those local authorities into the
system. We ran our first major training workshop with them this
week and we are getting a very positive response from the local
authorities using the system. We also have identified that 70%
of local authorities have never taken a prosecution for environmental
crime, so we are working with local authorities now to run training
courses for them as to how to promote prosecution for environmental
crime and we are getting an enthusiastic response.
Mrs Clark: That is amazing.
Q75 Chairman: That figure of 70% is quite
extraordinary. How did you arrive at it?
Mr Brocklehurst: This is through
dialogue with the local authorities and through data coming from
the ENCAMS survey, which was a survey of local authorities who
have taken action on fly-tipping, as a way of pulling together
data across all the local authorities. One of the problems we
have faced is that the Agency staff have been tending to get pulled
down into dealing with the low end of the fly-tipping debate,
dealing with what we call "white van man", which is
the small-scale electrical suppliers, small-scale builders and
down into the small-scale dumping of domestic materials. This
is not where we should be concentrating our resources but you
can see why that happens when there is a scale of activity going
on and no response coming through. One of the other issues linked
to Flycapture is the direction from the Secretary of State
which is out for consultation to direct the Agency to concentrate
on large-scale, hazardous, criminal, organised, illegal waste
activities, and for the local authorities to concentrate on the
smaller scale end and be the vanguard in dealing with the local
issues.
Q76 Chairman: We will come on to explore
that a little bit later. On the Flycapture programme, am
I right in thinking that it only applies to offences on public
land?
Mr Brocklehurst: These are incidents
reported to and acted upon by the local authorities and also it
would be backed up by the reporting into our own national database
system. But we are looking at a phase 2 of Flycapture that
would allow us to bring in data from incidents reported to the
National Trust, Railtrack, British Waterways and we are exploring
the issue of farmland as well as to how we can capture those private
land activities. So, you are correct—
Q77 Chairman: I am sorry, where an incident
takes place on private land and it is reported to the local authority,
then it is within the system.
Mr Brocklehurst: It is within
the system if a response takes place, yes.
Dr Skinner: It is a practical
issue in terms of what we can do to get the system up and running,
and, by discussion and agreement with Defra and others, what Martin
has called phase 1 was constrained to incidents known to either
the Agency or local authorities, but, as we have said, we are
already going into dialogue with others. There are practical issues
about how information has got on to the system and how you have
access to it and such like, but we certainly want to bring in
all the other kinds of landowners. The most difficult, of course,
is agricultural land, but discussions are in place and we would
feel able to do that when we have the first phase launched and
operating.
Q78 Mr Thomas: From what I have heard
and read about this scheme, it seems much needed. From what you
have also said about identifying authorities that have not taken
prosecutions, obviously there is a huge need there. Could you
just say what is holding back those authorities who have not yet
signed up for the scheme. Why is not every authority in England
and Wales falling over themselves to be part of this? Please do
not just say money to me. I think it is more than that.
Dr Skinner: The issue, as the
hot spot map shows, does vary in its intensity across the country
and therefore in terms of the priorities of local authorities.
Q79 Mr Thomas: If 70% of local authorities
are not doing anything, then if that 70% were doing something
the map could look even worse, could it not?
Dr Skinner: There are two things
we have given you. The 70% figure is prosecutions not taken. Some
authorities are active in managing fly-tipping issues but have
not actually got to the stage of taking any prosecutions. In some
cases they will be ones that have been done jointly with us. The
number of local authorities who are actively engaging with Flycapture
is a high proportion and I think it will be a lot higher by the
time we reach D-day. As I say, we are only rolling the system
out, we are starting the training. Some authorities have come
to the training but have not formally got on board. I am optimistic
that that will happen and I am optimistic also that the availability
of the data and the profile it gives to the issue will change
that response as we go forward.
Mr Brocklehurst: Could I add that
the whole package of Flycapture has been put together in
a very short timeframe, for an internet-based software tool. It
has been developed literally in the period from about last August/September,
so it is not surprising that there are a few more local authorities
to come on board. We expect to see 100%.
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