Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-118)
DR ANDREW
SKINNER, MR
MARTIN BROCKLEHURST
AND MR
ARWYN JONES
25 MARCH 2004
Q100 Mr Challen: ENCAMS have suggested
that local authorities could do a lot more to tackle environmental
crime within their existing resources. I am wondering if you feel
that criticism might also apply to the Environmental Agency.
Dr Skinner: We can get a bit smarter
on certain areas of our work. Certainly the protocol that we have
been describing and the tasks set out in there have been drawn
up and are being turned into operating practice in order to make
the best use of our resources and the databases that we are talking
about, which we are developing, will also make us more efficient.
To that extent I accept the challenge but the
scale of the increase in activity, the scale of the activity in
environmental and public health risk, the scale of the increase
in expectation is not commensurate with the improvements that
I would expect to see from those kinds of measures, so we will
fall short. Indeed, the Government have accepted this in their
response to your last report, so I think it is common currency
that this is an issue which is under-resourced. As always we will
work to make sure the resources we have got will be used most
effectively and better data and better partnership arrangements
are key to that.
Q101 Mr Challen: From your point of view
it would be more resources and not more powers that you need at
this moment in time to deliver the targets?
Dr Skinner: The Anti-Social Behaviour
Bill will deliver additional powers to us and, more importantly,
to local authorities. As I have already indicated, there are some
issues which we will be dealing with in our response to the consultation
document. It is an issue of capacity that is primarily our concern.
Q102 Mr Challen: I understand that the
LGA are quite keen on having a £300 fixed penalty notice
for failure to have the relevant duty of care paperwork at hand,
waste transfers and whatnot. I was brought up on a diet of Steptoe
and Son and it seems to me that that would never have existed
if it was burdened with all this regulation so, instead of putting
stuff out for the rag and bone man, people would just chuck it
out anywhere. Do you think that we are overburdening this informal
recycling sector with regulations and waste transfer certificates
and heaven knows what else that we do not know about?
Dr Skinner: It is difficult to
deal with issues without some kind of structure because the way
that the Agency feels that we should tackle the problem of waste
is from cradle to grave, to use that phrase. Where there is not
information about where waste is coming from, where it is going
to, who is abusing it, who is misusing it, where it is going back
into beneficial use, it is very hard to manage the waste cycle.
Because a lot of it operates in the area of small business, it
is very difficult to see how you can co-ordinate that without
some form of tracking, which is what you have described. It does
not have to be that burdensome, particularly when we can apply
new technologies to it in terms of registering and such like.
My answer is I feel we have to do this and that to lessen that
kind of regulatory structure which would actually exacerbate the
problem that we now face.
Q103 Mr Challen: It puts the emphasis
on regulating waste rather than saying how can we encourage the
recycling of certain materials.
Dr Skinner: We do encourage it,
and that is in place. Within the whole strategy that we are working
to, that Defra is working to, it is about beneficial reuse where
possible but in order to plan that you have to have the information.
Q104 Mr Challen: Are you keen on registering
waste carriers?
Dr Skinner: Yes, very.
Q105 Mr Challen: How would that work
out in practice?
Mr Jones: The registration of
waste carriers is already a process that has been in place for
some time. What we have noticed since that legislation has been
in place is a gradual decline in the numbers of carriers who are
registering. What we need to do, and what we are doing, is undertaking
campaigns to understand why people who originally registered then
drop out of the registration loop. What we are quite keen on is
to make the registration identification accessible and visible
so that carriers of waste are carrying and displaying the disc
and for there to be penalties in place if they do not. That would
actually make it more visible and clearer that people are authorised
carriers of waste and easier to track those who are not. We also
believe it would be easier if the vehicle itself was registered
rather than individual. That would make it easier to reconcile
the information that the other agencies hold, like the Vehicle
Inspectorate.
Q106 Mr Challen: Is that not devising
a system which is catching the horse after it has bolted? I do
not understand how this is going to work. If somebody is driving
a vehicle that does not bear a certificate, how are you going
to be able to monitor that vehicle?
Mr Jones: What we do at the present
time is we participate with the police and the Vehicle Inspectorate
in some of the roadside checks that they do periodically and if
it is a vehicle that is a carrier of waste, such as a tipper-truck,
we will ascertain with the police, or we will ask the police to
ascertain is it a registered carrier and we can verify from our
own database whether it is registered and current or not. We also
undertake spot checks on vehicles going into landfill sites to
see whether they are registered. It can be done through a series
of spot checks.
Q107 Mr Challen: Will this not create
more bureaucracy and not actually achieve anything? Will you get
more prosecutions out of it?
Dr Skinner: We will get more prosecutions
but, also, this kind of official process gives empowerment to
individuals to take responsibility for their own part of the waste
cycle. If you go to your local paper you may well find some very
attractive offers for skips and our message is if a waste deal
looks like it is too good to be true, it is probably illegal.
There is an issue here about all of us having responsibility for
waste we generate and for putting it into legal processes. If
there were more controls and more visible controls, as we have
described to you, then you as a private individual could be more
sure that you were entrusting the rubble from your extension to
a responsible source.
Q108 Mr Challen: Will it be self-financing?
Will it lead to more people being employed in the prosecution
of offences and the detection of offences or is it really just
going to take out people from other areas of work?
Dr Skinner: The registration of
carriers scheme is a charging scheme which generates income which
the Agency uses to promote the practices I am describing.
Q109 Mr Thomas: Can I just come in on
this point. There are two aspects to this. If you are going to
have a more robust system, in your view, there is a part of the
waste stream that is actually very variable, as I think Mr Challen
has referred to. When I got rid of two dining chairs recently
I did not put them on the dump, I did not take them to the civic
amenity site, I gave them to a local charity that refurbishes
furniture. I do not know if they have got a waste transfer certificate
but I know that as a charity I would not want them to be burdened
and feel that they could not do a task like that. The second aspect
of it is on the legitimate business, if you like. I have just
been talking to two car dismantlers in my own constituency who
have just got certification from yourselves with regard to the
End of Life Vehicle Directive and it has cost them tens of thousands
of pounds in each case, but they are concerned that there are
still people in the area who claim that they can deal with abandoned
cars. Have you got the resources, either through this method or
any other method, for dealing with those who are undercutting
legitimate businesses but also to ensure that there is protection
for those innovative parts, which tend to come from the voluntary
sector, dealing with waste streams?
Dr Skinner: The Agency's aspiration
with all these regulatory regimes is a level playing field which
means that we would like to have the ability, and increasingly
will have, to make sure that legitimate traders who get their
permits are not disadvantaged by others undercutting them. It
is the same with the carriers, the same with the skip operators,
and it will be with end of life vehicles. The whole issue of levelling
up the playing field for the regulatory community is very important
to us. There is no reason why the charity side should be disadvantaged
because in the process that you have described your chairs were
not waste.
Q110 Mr Thomas: They were waste as far
as I was concerned.
Mr Brocklehurst: Concerning the
registration of carriers, registered charities are exempt from
that process. Safeguards have been built into the system.
Q111 Mrs Clark: Bearing in mind your
evidence in the last inquiry we had on sentencing powers, can
I assume that you are very enthusiastic about the increased sentences
proposed in the consultation we have referred to and, in particular,
the removal of the defence of ignorance and acting under orders?
Do these suggestions fit the bill or are they not enough?
Mr Jones: They do. They are proposals
that are very much welcomed and we are pleased to see them. There
are some other suggestions that I think we would like to make
and will respond to the document in the consultation in fuller
terms. We also submitted from the last session the supplementary
evidence to you on corporate offences which we want to put into
Defra's thinking at this time as well. We particularly welcome
in the Defra consultation the research that they will do to better
understand the motivations for why people are committing fly-tipping
offences, environmental crime, and that way we will know, and
I think we mentioned this last time, that just a fine in its own
right may not fit and some other kind of punishment may be more
of a deterrent for them. We welcome that research and we hope
that will lead to a best practice guide, as the consultation suggests,
on the types of actions to pursue to best deter people from committing
these offences to start with.
Q112 Mrs Clark: What sort of dialogue
are you going to be having with Defra about how best to deal with
construction demolition and excavation waste? To what extent is
this a major problem only in the South East? Is it set to get
worse with all the new homes that we will see being built in and
around this area? For example, in my own constituency we are having
a lot of key worker homes being built in the very near future.
Mr Brocklehurst: Construction
and demolition waste is a big issue for us. The real challenge
that we face is that when companies are involved in developing
sites, that they have actually got and have thought through a
rational disposal plan for the materials they are going to produce.
One of the issues that is in the consultation paper is this idea
of a waste disposal plan for major construction activities. We
are now engaged with the Department of Trade and Industry and
with the construction industry in drafting what that best practice
would look like and there is considerable enthusiasm for this
approach. The logic for that is if you take the Thames Gateway,
which is the biggest brownfield redevelopment site in Western
Europe, if we continue along the line that we currently adopt
then for any contaminated land that is found, the traditional
approach has been to dig and dump. We now know from the changes
in co-disposal for hazardous materials that there will be no landfill
sites in London for that type of material, there will only be
one in the South East of England and we expect that to be full
by 2005. There are possibilities still for what we call mono-cells
on existing landfill sites to be worked through and there may
still be some facilities in that area but what this is going to
mean is a radical rethink of how you develop brownfield sites
and having a waste management plan as part of the development
becomes crucial. There are decisions to be made as to how material
is treated and handled.
Q113 Mrs Clark: So it is planned as part
of construction rather than "oh, what do we with the mess
at the end?"
Mr Brocklehurst: Absolutely. The
traditional approach of dig and dump is not sustainable in the
long-term. The other options that are available are to treat the
contaminated land in situ or to treat it ex situ rather than simply
removing it from the site. The technology is there to take that
approach rather than to simply dig and dump it somewhere else.
This is a big issue. A waste disposal plan, best practice, thinks
the issue through in advance rather than trying to deal with the
end product. The other issue that we have made an important point
on is the responsibility for the disposal of the waste needs to
rest much higher up the hierarchy than it currently does. At the
moment it is possible to pass on your duty of care responsibility
to the sub-contractors who are involved in removing the waste,
but we believe that responsibility should rest with the site developers
and the site owners. That would then tie in with the proper waste
disposal plan for the site.
Q114 Mr Thomas: Just a couple of questions
about how this now impacts on the individual because in this inquiry
we are really looking at changing the individual's ways of behaviour,
that is what we are trying to get at, how we can achieve that.
Just looking at your quite attractive little leaflet here under
"Where you live", you say, quite plainly, "Report
environmental crime, such as pollution incidents or fly-tipping.
Call the Environment Agency hotline on", and I will read
it into the record because any publicity is good publicity I would
have thought, "0800 807060". Is that the only number
that a member of the public now needs to report any type of fly-tipping,
illegal dumping, whatever, because we have touched on this protocol
but that does not matter to the public, what they need to know
is a simple reporting mechanism? Are you confident that represents
a simple reporting mechanism?
Dr Skinner: Yes, it does. It is
a number that operates in the whole of the United Kingdom. If
you ring it in Belfast it will get through to the Agency's counterpart
in Northern Ireland. We have effective relationships in our control
centres to make sure that we can pass this information on to other
agencies where relevant. Obviously local authorities have their
own numbers and when people know them and use them and it is relevant,
that is fine, but this is a longstop which has been in place now
for six years and is working well.
Q115 Mr Thomas: When you say it is working
well, are the numbers increasing? Are people using it?
Dr Skinner: The numbers are increasing
significantly. I am afraid I do not have the numbers available
but we could give them to you.
Q116 Mr Thomas: It would be interesting
to see that. Your memorandum to the Committee has said that where
there are simple reporting mechanisms and publicity you get more
action by local communities.
Dr Skinner: That is right.
Q117 Mr Thomas: So it would be interesting
to see how that number relates to that.
Dr Skinner: We will get that information
for you. It will show an increase over the time that the system
has been working.
Q118 Mr Thomas: Can I go back to what
you were saying earlier when you referred to the need for the
individual to know where that skip was going, for example. That
is a hag's dream, as we say in Wales. It is a little bit too idealistic,
is it not, to think that if I have got my hedge cut and somebody
is taking away the rubbish, I might ask them "Where are you
going to dump it" and they may say "I am taking it to
the civic amenity site", and that is it. Where should we
be concentrating our resources? Is it in making the members of
the public police the regulations in that way or is it more trying
to get people to change their attitudes from square one about
waste minimisation in the first place, recycling, composting in
their homes, and this sort of thing? Are we not setting the bar
a little too specialised when you make those remarks? Perhaps
we should be looking at a much wider broad and shallow approach
to get people's awareness up.
Dr Skinner: Obviously I misled
you if I was suggesting that was the way we dealt with the waste
problem. Waste is a lifestyle problem, it is about the whole way
in which we think about the products we use, the products we buy.
You start when you buy things, you carry on when you use them
and how you might reuse them. All we are saying is that in that
spectrum of awareness about the environmental cost of the use
of natural resources, one of the issues is that is hopefully decreasing
by a proportion and you do take an interest in where the waste
is going. I do not mean you have to know which incinerator or
which landfill site it is going to but you give it to somebody
who has an obligation legally, which is the chain of registration,
so you have the confidence that that will be dealt with properly
and you will pay the fair price because you know that a responsible
person is registered and is paying appropriate charges to manage
those registrations. Waste is too cheap, waste disposal is too
cheap, and it is because the full costs are not being paid through
the system. It is only part of the attack on lifestyle understanding
of waste.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
On that note we will end this session. We are very grateful to
you, you have been helpful. Thank you very much.
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