Conclusions and recommendations
1. Northern Ireland's delay in transposing
EU Directives into local legislation exposed the UK government
to the risk of infraction fines.
Insufficient resourcing of the Department's legislation team led
to Northern Ireland having a large backlog of EU environmental
Directives awaiting transposition in 2002 and the risk of the
UK incurring fines of up to £400,000 per day. Now that the
backlog has been eradicated, it is essential that the Department
keeps its legislation programme in line with the rest of the UK,
to ensure that this woeful performance is not repeated.
2. The Department has not yet produced a Sustainable
Development Strategy (SDS) and it is now several years overdue.
The UK's SDS is a cornerstone of environmental
policy and each region apart from NI has, in addition, its own
SDS, with local objectives and targets. The Department's
legislation team also has responsibility for developing the SDS
and did not begin work in earnest until the backlog was cleared
in 2004. There can be no further delay in producing Northern Ireland's
SDS, since extra staff are now available and there are equivalent
documents for the rest of the UK to act as examples. The Department
must ensure that it meets the Summer 2006 target date.
3. There are limitations in the quality of
data used to develop, monitor and report on the Waste Management
Strategy and the existing targets are not sufficiently stretching.
The Department must put in place effective and reliable systems
for gathering and analysing data for all waste streams, so that
its targets and reported statistics are credible. This should
be done without delay, to facilitate the development of new targets
that can be made to bite. We expect to see such targets in the
new Strategy, and reported quarterly on the Department's website.
4. Greening Government is an important element
of the Strategy, but the Department's progress in improving its
own waste management performance has been slow.
The importance of the leadership role within Government is self-evident,
yet the Department only produced its first waste action plan in
October 2004. If the Department is to act as an example to others,
it must be seen to implement good practice in all aspects of its
environmental management. Putting in place targets equivalent
to those of its Westminster counterpart would be a good place
to start.
5. Enforcing waste legislation and tackling
illegal dumping are resource-intensive and require ongoing commitment.
Under-resourcing of its regulatory teams
and hasty introduction of new legislation to clear the transposition
backlog meant that the Department did not always have proper guidance
and enforcement procedures in place, or the staff to implement
them. The Department estimates average profits to illegal site
operators to be in the region of £1 million, with £24
million in total going to the black economy annually. Despite
recent successes against illegal dumpers, dealing with offenders
and damage to the environment after the event is costly. This
work must be balanced with a strong preventative effort. The Department
should issue clear guidelines for waste producers affected by
legislation, as it is introduced, and undertake regular monitoring
to ensure that the guidelines are being followed, in order to
reduce the occurrence of illegal dumping in the first place.
6. Councils have an important role in implementing
key Waste Management Strategy targets. Responsibility
for delivering EU targets for recycling or composting household
waste and reducing the amount of biodegradable waste sent to landfill
rests primarily with Councils. Failure to meet the landfill target
risks incurring fines which will, ultimately, be payable by ratepayers.
Councils' waste plans should align fully with the requirements
of the Waste Management Strategy, set out clearly how they will
meet its targets and how new infrastructure that is expected to
cost in the region of £270 million to £300 million,
and other measures, will be funded.
7. In 2002, the Department exercised poor
financial control when it paid £1.3 million to Councils in
advance of need. The Department supplied
grants to Councils to assist them with the cost of developing
their waste management plans. In 2002, it paid grants that included
£1.3 million that was not spent by the end of the financial
year, despite Councils' assurances to the contrary. The Department
must prevent any recurrence of such advance payments and put in
place robust financial controls to ensure that payments to the
bodies it funds are based on actual funding requirements for the
period in question.
8. The Department has made slow progress in
achieving the Waste Management Strategy targets and implementing
the recommendations of its Advisory Board.
In 2004, the Waste Management Advisory Board, composed of stakeholders
appointed by the Department, reported only limited progress against
the 2000 Strategy, and made a number of recommendations for improvement.
Despite resource shortages, the Department allocated skilled staff
to producing a formal response, challenging some of the Board's
findings. If expert Boards are appointed to provide guidance,
that guidance should generally be accepted and implemented, if
the exercise is to have real value and lead to improvements.
9. Two of the Board's key recommendations
have still not been implemented. These
were: a cross-Departmental delivery group should be established,
at Permanent Secretary level; and the huge infrastructural deficit
should be addressed. The results of the Review of Public Administration,
announced by the Secretary of State in November 2005,[1]
should not be used as a justification for any further delay in
introducing long-overdue improvements, for example, in deciding
whether or not there should be a single waste management authority
for Northern Ireland.
10. The Minister has announced a review of
environmental governance in Northern Ireland. The
Public Accounts Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the
Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster and Waste Management
Advisory Board all saw a case for establishing an independent
environmental regulator, of the sort that exists in every other
part of the British Isles. Given Northern Ireland's poor record
on environmental governance in general, and waste management in
particular, the case for doing so is now self-evident and it should
be done without delay following the review.
1 HC Debates, 22 November 2005, col 106WS Back
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