Select Committee on Communities and Local Government Committee Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 88 - 99)

MONDAY 21 MAY 2007

MR JOHN DUFFY AND MR PETE DAW

  Q88  Chair: Could I ask you to introduce yourselves, please?

  Mr Duffy: I am John Duffy. I am Director of Environmental Policy for the Mayor.

  Mr Daw: I am Peter Daw and I work as Principal Policy Officer in the Waste Strategy Team for the Greater London Authority.

  Q89  Chair: As you know we want to explore one quite narrow topic with you which is the issue that the Mayor has been arguing with the ministers in Defra where he is essentially saying that London boroughs are achieving landfill reductions on paper but not in reality by the diversion of commercial waste to other sources. Can you just briefly set out your evidence for that assertion?

  Mr Duffy: It is non-household waste in London; municipal waste is 21% which is roughly a quarter of the four million tonnes that are going out of London. This is higher than the rest of the country. At present we just recycle 9% of that compared to 30% nationally.

  Q90  Chair: When you say it is higher than the rest of the country, what exactly is higher?

  Mr Duffy: The proportion of municipal waste is higher.

  Q91  Chair: Which is commercial?

  Mr Duffy: Yes.

  Mr Daw: It is 10% in the rest of the country and 20% in London.

  Mr Duffy: As you know the purpose of the Landfill Directive is to reduce the amount of biodegradable waste which is sent to landfill but there are loopholes we believe that are being exploited. The waste continues to go to the landfill but it is not recorded as municipal waste, it is going through the private sector. We are concerned that due to slow progress in developing infrastructure in London and as the LATS targets get harder, the temptation will be to divert more of this waste through the private sector. The non-municipal sector—the private sector—do not have the same drivers to reduce landfill so that is where we come from. If you want to know how I think the system is being exploited, a number of boroughs—Wandsworth, Kingston and Brent—have sold off their trade waste portfolios and other boroughs are pricing themselves out of the commercial waste field. Some of them are just not being aggressive enough on their sales so what we are seeing is a drop in that amount of waste. That is not illegal in itself but the idea is that if you sell it you should still declare this as waste and it should be reported to the local authorities or to government.

  Q92  Chair: Are you saying those three boroughs have sold off their commercial waste but not declared it?

  Mr Duffy: Yes.

  Q93  Chair: How do you know they have done it?

  Mr Daw: In our submission we have provided some evidence of authorities where the amount of collected non-household waste has dramatically reduced from the period 2000 to 2005-06. In terms of the country as a whole I would point out that the non-household municipal waste stream in England excluding London has reduced from the year before this scheme started from 2.8 million tonnes to 2.4 million tonnes which is a drop of about 17%. In London that figure has dropped from just over a million tonnes to 886,000 tonnes, again a drop of 17%. Household waste over that same period—the period before the LATS scheme started and the first year of LATS—has actually decreased very slightly in England whereas in London it has increased slightly. Given that trade waste largely reflects what the economy is doing, it seems strange that there is almost a 20% drop in that waste stream both in England and also in London.

  Mr Duffy: Traditionally if you look at the way the economy was rising, waste also rose and dipped and they shadowed each other to a degree. Now with this 17% drop in one year either something is very wrong with the economy or something else is going on and that is the real issue. A 17% drop in economic terms would be a major depression going on out there. We think that that is not the case; we think the economy is doing reasonably well and therefore these figures are being changed.

  Q94  Chair: Just so that we get this clear and using the figures just for Wandsworth to simplify it down, it was roughly 32,614 non-household waste in 2000-01 down to 2,804 in 2005-06. Is that from public figures?

  Mr Daw: Those figures are taken from Western Riverside's Best Value Performance Plan 2006-07, so those are public figures.

  Q95  Chair: You are saying that the authority has not specifically informed government that that drop is because they have sold off their commercial waste?

  Mr Daw: Under the rules of the scheme as set out by government that waste should still be reported even if it is no longer collected on behalf of the authority. I think what we are saying is that there is a dramatic drop and we are not really convinced that is being investigated fully by either Defra or the Environment Agency.

  Q96  Mr Betts: What is the definition of waste that should be reported in these circumstances, because some authorities traditionally had a mixed collection where the authorities did some and private commercial operators did the other. Now if it is only that traditionally done by the authority that should be reported how do you determine which bit it is?

  Mr Duffy: Some of them are collected separately. In the case of Wandsworth, for instance, they collected it separately and sold the whole system off separately. There are some boroughs that collected the same and they make an estimate on how much that is. The issue is whether new contracts are being signed up? We have doubts that that is the case. It will become clear if you look at the statistics of all the boroughs. Like I said, a 17% drop in a year is quite high.

  Q97  Mr Betts: How is it defined what should be reported? Clearly if the local authority collects it and disposes of it that should be reported. If the local authority stops collecting it how should it be determined which bit of what they stop collecting they should report as really being stuff they would have collected otherwise?

  Mr Daw: This was an issue that was flagged up with Defra when they were consulting on the scheme way back in 2004 and Defra actually published some guidance because local authorities were saying, "Isn't there an incentive, because of the costs of the LATS scheme which are not on the private sector, our costs are going to go up and our prices will go up?" Equally, if we want to avoid LATS fines one way of doing that might be to let that waste go to the commercial sector. The Government's own guidance states a waste collection authority cannot evade its duty under the 1990 Environmental Protection Act which is to collect waste where requested to do so or make arrangements by selling off its existing collection services. Selling off an existing service is in substance no different from the waste collection authority arranging for the commercial waste to be collected by a private contractor. Thus, for the same reasons, the waste formerly collected by the authority would remain under its control and would constitute municipal waste." What that is trying to say basically is that if you sell off your commercial waste you must still report it under the rules of the scheme.

  Q98  Chair: If a borough had sold off its commercial waste and then did not declare it, does that mean it has an awful lot of slack for domestic waste to landfill in that it will have a target which is now incredibly easy to stick to?

  Mr Duffy: Yes.

  Chair: So that is the incentive for doing it.

  Q99  Anne Main: There is a huge carrot for doing it really in terms of keeping their figures down.

  Mr Daw: I think given that government guidance on it, it would suggest when they consulted it was raised by many local authorities and again the figures from the year before the scheme started and the first year of the scheme suggest there is a very large and unusual drop in commercial waste collected by local authorities.

  Mr Duffy: Some of these are legitimate to do. A lot of you come from a local government background and I think the issue to get your costs down is a position they take, but I have to say that the Mayor's view is that we are supposed to be diverting waste from the home counties, not sending it to the private sector. We are worried about the figures that are being produced that actually say that we are diverting waste and we are not. We are recycling some because recycling has gone partly in London but a lot of this waste is still in the stream and so we want that clarified. In Wandsworth's case we think that may be just wrong, and maybe in Brent and Kingston. Other people have just priced themselves out of the market. That creates a gap and, like I say, it is the way local authorities have to look at their books but a 17% drop in London in a year is quite outstanding. If you had that sort of drop in the commercial sector generally it would be recession time. Clearly that waste has not gone and I think it is still going to landfill; it is just not going through the books of the local authorities.


 
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