Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 209)
TUESDAY 22 MAY 2007
CLLR GARY
PORTER, MR
GARY ALDERSON,
MS NICOLA
BEACH AND
MR IAN
DAVIES
Q200 Chair: Can I ask, because it
has come up elliptically, whether some of you do charge for some
things? I think it was you, Ms Beach, who said that people bought
bags.
Ms Beach: Under the current legislation
there are powers for waste collection authorities to make charges
but those are very clear.
Q201 Chair: What charges do you impose?
Ms Beach: I am aware of an example
in North Norfolk District Council where they charge extra for
bags and the householder has to buy a tag which they put on the
bag and any bag without it they will not pick up. Maldon District
Council charge for garden waste. The issue there is that as soon
as you mix food waste in with it you are not allowed to charge
for it because that is deemed to be true household waste. So there
are some grey areas which you have to be careful about. The powers
are there but they are not enough to instigate any major change.
Q202 Chair: Do any of the other councils
charge for anything?
Cllr Porter: We do in terms of
garden waste but only as a disincentive to people for using our
service. We charge £1.50 for a special bag to put it in and
that just ends up in landfill. It is not because we do anything
clever with it, it is just to try and discourage people from doing
it. One of the Lincolnshire authorities, I think it is East Lindsey,
charge for a completely separate service, I think they charge
something like £29 a year which people opt into if they want
their garden waste collected.
Mr Davies: We charge a small registration
fee, which is £6, for the garden waste service. It is more
about trying to understand who is using the service so we can
engage with them.
Q203 Mr Betts: What about bulky items?
Mr Alderson: We only charge for
bulky waste collections. We charge £40 per load which is
what the contractor charges to us, so there is no profit or administration
element in it.
Q204 Mr Betts: Has that led to any
increase in fly-tipping?
Mr Alderson: No.
Q205 Mr Olner: When we speak about
the partnership among the authorities, there is always this tension
between the collecting authority and the waste disposal authority.
Do you think ultimately at the end of the day it should be one
authority?
Cllr Porter: No, is the simple
answer. It just needs to be more joined up. We need to have separate
collection methods because, as I think we have adequately demonstrated,
separate collection methods are important in different parts of
the country. There is no reason why the counties should not still
administer the final disposal, but what it needs is to be more
joined up with the methods which are necessary. In Lincolnshire
we only have holes in the ground, there is no alternative for
taking waste away; there is no incineration, there is no anaerobic
digestion, the recycling centres we use are in the south of Lincolnshire
and our refuse collection goes north, so any attempt at getting
split-bodies compactors to do the rural parts of South Holland
are completely out because we would end up sending them 30 miles
north to empty the rubbish and then—
Q206 Mr Olner: You send your rubbish
somewhere else then?
Cllr Porter: The holes in the
ground we send it to are in the next district and the recycling
centre is in the next district south.
Mr Olner: We see why you are not doing
much recycling then.
Q207 Chair: Mr Davies, we had a witness
from the Mayor of London's office yesterday and there are two
issues I want to ask about. One is your view on a single waste
authority for London, which I suspect I know the answer to but
perhaps you would give it.
Mr Davies: We would probably think
that it would cause an awful lot of bureaucracy, a lot of expenditure
for something which is not broken. Something like 21 of the 33
councils are served by statutory joint waste authorities and we
link in with West Riverside Waste Authority which is four collection
authorities and because the areas are fairly similar (Wandsworth,
Kensington & Chelsea, Lambeth and ourselves) that has enabled
us to have savings and harmonise our systems across those four
boroughs. In terms of collections we all use the same smart sacks
for recycling, we all use the same sort of garden waste system,
and it also helps them in terms of their publicity and profiling
and those types of things. If you were to do it as an across-London
authority, there would be distinct difficulties with the disposal
authority saying, "We are going to go down this route for
disposal, not linking into the way the collection authorities
chose to operate." That would be my main concern about it:
it would remove the flexibility, it would create additional costs.
The majority of London authorities are performing very well in
terms of recycling, if you look at the dry recycling figures and
remove the garden waste recyclers from the equation because we
are not in a position where we can recycle large amounts of green
waste.
Q208 Chair: The second question is
in relation to Hammersmith & Fulham and commercial waste.
Does Hammersmith & Fulham deal with any commercial waste?
Did it in the past and have you got rid of it?
Mr Davies: We do deal with commercial
waste. We are in the process of market testing collection services
and we will continue to run a commercial waste sector effectively.
The client side of the authority will carry out the administration
and sales, and the contractor will carry out the operational side.
The reason we have done that is not because we think there are
huge amounts of money to be made in commercial waste, because
there is not—as a local authority we are constrained over
the commercial sector because we are subject to the LATS allowances
which the commercial sector are not so there are difficulties
there—but the reason is that it keeps us in control of the
streets. I have met a number of other boroughs who say that. If
you operate your own commercial waste sector, it does enable you
to control the commercial waste coming out into the borough.
Q209 Chair: What do you mean it enables
you to control it?
Mr Davies: If you have a large
number of commercial operators within your borough they will dictate
when commercial premises are putting their waste out on to the
streets. You can introduce things like time allocations, which
we know Westminster have done, and K&C are trialling that
at the moment and we are looking at it for the town centre areas,
but it still does not give you the level of control you would
have; if you were to completely remove all the waste to the commercial
sector, you lose control over that waste stream. If you keep it
in house you have at least got some control over how it is collected,
times of collection and where it is going.
Ms Beach: Referring back to the
partnership question, my overall comment would be that I think
we need to move away from more parochial views and look at the
best value for the taxpayer. My personal view is that I think
it is very dangerous when you start to segment between what the
district is paying, and what the county is paying. We in Essex
are trying to look at the entire thing and I cite some examples
in my paper about some of the system design work we are doing.
I am not talking about one system for all because I accept that
does not work but it is about looking at where we can be most
efficient and deliver some real advantages for our local communities.
I am concerned when I think it is too much focused on, "We
are the collection authority, they are the disposal authority
and never the twain shall meet." I am afraid these are joint
challenges and unless we stand up and work together it just will
not work and certainly in Essex we are striving to do that.
Mr Alderson: There must be close
joint working, but there must still be flexibility. In Bedfordshire
each of the three collection authorities deliver our waste in
different streams as required by the waste disposal authority—recycled,
residual waste, garden waste—but we all collect it differently
in our own patches. Thankfully we have not got any places where
one side of the street is in Bedford Borough and the other side
is in Mid Beds, it does not happen, we have a clear bit of green
land between us. So conceptually it looks silly that three councils
are collecting their waste in different ways but it works for
those three councils and the county are happy because what they
are getting is how they want to receive it.
Chair: Thank you all very much indeed,
it has been very helpful. If afterwards you think of something
you wanted to tell us or any figures you wanted to give us, do
drop them in to the clerk, they will be very helpful.
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