Select Committee on Communities and Local Government Committee Fifth Report


7  WASTE PLANNING

100. The waste hierarchy emphasises reduction, re-use and recycling as environmentally preferable options to disposal for dealing with waste, and much of the foregoing relates to central and local government's efforts to improve the part played by each of those three approaches. Nevertheless, and in spite of the drive to reduce dramatically the amount of waste being sent to landfill, the role of incineration within England's waste management activities is likely substantially to increase in the coming decade. The Minister for Waste told us "there is no doubt that we will have to increase the level of waste to energy in this country from about 10 per cent at the moment to 25 per cent. It will still be far lower than most other European countries and lower than we thought it would have to be in the Waste Strategy 2000 because we have done so well on recycling."[158]

101. DCLG is responsible for the planning process through which applications for the facilities required to meet that increase from 10 per cent to 25 per cent will have to go. Incinerators are both expensive for those who construct them and unpopular among those near whom they are built. Their presence may also have an impact on local authority strategies to reduce, reuse or recycle waste, particularly if they offer a cheap alternative or if an incineration contract requires the incinerator to be 'fed'. The Environment Secretary, in launching the Waste Strategy for England 2007, said that a major step to achieving the Government's waste reduction objectives would be investment in infrastructure to collect, sort, reprocess and treat waste.[159] Those facilities will include MRFs, anaerobic digesters and associated combined heat and power plant, and incinerators, and the NAO has predicted that meeting EU landfill targets will require about 15 million tonnes of new waste processing capacity.[160] The LGA anticipates £10 billion worth of investment being required to build mechanical and biological treatment plants, incinerators and other treatment and recovery facilities, and the Office of Government Commerce reported that as many as 50 waste management contracts would need to be let every year for the next four years to meet demand.[161] Biffa Waste Services, one of the country's largest private waste management firms, believes we are already two or three years behind schedule on building capacity to meet the EU's landfill diversion targets.[162]

102. Planning policy on waste is governed by Planning Policy Statement 10 (PPS 10) Planning for Sustainable Waste Management, and it is likely that changes will emerge in the light of the White Paper Planning for a Sustainable Future issued by DCLG in May 2007. Our evidence has highlighted the difficulties of obtaining planning permission for major facilities. The Environmental Services Association is unequivocal: "Obtaining planning permission for new treatment and recovery facilities continues to be a major constraint to development of new infrastructure within the UK […] there has been little evidence that planning for waste management facilities has become more straightforward."[163] The LGA, too, notes the difficulty of obtaining planning permission, but adds that public opposition is another major barrier.[164] Recent changes to the private finance initiative have involved reconsideration of commercial wastes and the grant of PFI credits to contracts for residual waste treatment facilities. Opinion on their efficacy has been mixed: WRAP welcomes the changes because excluding collection from PFI deals means not tying in arrangements for up to 25 years; the LGA, on the other hand, says the changes have caused further delays, although it accepts they may bring longer-term benefits.[165] The Government has made it clear that substantial infrastructure development will be necessary if waste diversion targets are to be met in the coming decades. In its coming implementation of the proposals in its planning White Paper, the Department for Communities and Local Government will need carefully to balance the desire for simplification in the obtaining of planning permission for major waste-related infrastructure projects with the objections of local communities to new facilities, including incinerators, desired by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to boost energy-from-waste production from its current 10 per cent to 25 per cent.

103. Having passed through planning into operation, waste treatment facilities further impact on local waste management policies and strategies. East Lindsey District Council raised the "real risk" that the presence of an energy from waste plant might be a disincentive to schemes to promote and encourage recycling.[166] Certainly, the presence, or otherwise, of facilities within a local area will determine the extent to which a local authority adopts any particular disposal strategy, but this concern seems over-stated. A further concern raised was the need to 'feed' energy from waste facilities once built: as WRAP notes, highly capital intensive plants such as incinerators may require between 12 and 18 years of operation to pay back their investment.[167] Once again, the presence of such a facility, potentially offering both an immediately cheaper disposal option than recycling and a need to keep it going to fulfil a return on investment may affect local authority choices on how to dispose of waste. This is a real concern, although the need to more than double England's energy from waste may reduce it in the early stages. In the medium term, those authorities that decide to invest in producing more energy from waste will need to develop strategies to send only unrecyclable material for incineration and to use the flexibility in the Landfill Allowances Trading Scheme to trade incineration capacity with other authorities who may otherwise find it difficult to reduce their landfill to the extent required.


158   Q 273 Back

159   HC Deb, 24 May 2007, col. 1463 Back

160   NAO, Reducing the reliance on Landfill in England, HC 1177, 26 July 2006 Back

161   RC 40, Local Government Association memorandum, printed in vol. II Back

162   RC 33, Biffa Waste Services Ltd memorandum, printed in vol. II Back

163   RC 17, Environmental Services Association memorandum, printed in vol. II Back

164   RC 40, Local Government Association memorandum, printed in vol. II Back

165   RC 44, Waste and Resources Action Programme memorandum, and RC 40, Local Government Association memorandum, both printed in vol. II Back

166   RC 5, East Lindsey District Council memorandum, printed in vol. II Back

167   RC 44, Waste and Resources Action Programme memorandum, printed in vol. II Back


 
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