TUESDAY 31 OCTOBER 2000

MR ROGER HOCKNEY AND MR ANDREW PRICE

  180. That was a figure which was questioned by the first set of witnesses. I do not think you heard that bit of evidence but what was being said was that that really was a nonsense, that actually it was a statistical problem, that what used to be trade waste was being smuggled into civic community sites and things like that and there was not the evidence for a big increase. Do you think the 3 per cent can be justified?
  (Mr Price) My response to that would be that I work in a county where it is growing at 6 per cent.

  181. Is that 6 per cent going through household wheelie-bins or dustbins or black bags?
  (Mr Price) That is right.

  182. So that is a straight measurement of what is coming out of households?
  (Mr Price) But that is peculiar to our demography, Chairman. We happen to be a county where the population is growing at a faster rate than normal—

  183. What I was asking you was, per individual, per household, the amount of waste is increasing by 6 per cent?
  (Mr Price) No, that is not what I said.

  184. How much is it increasing per person?
  (Mr Price) I would have to find that information for you, Chairman.

  185. You say in your evidence that it is desirable that waste management strategy should cover all the waste and not just municipal waste, can you tell us why you think that is not happening sufficiently at the moment?
  (Mr Price) I think the derivation of that is that waste management is interpreted in this country as substantially being about household waste, and indeed municipal waste is used as the term to cover largely what I believe is household waste. It derives from the imperative back in the last century of public health legislation through to environmental protection legislation these days, which is that dustbins need to be dealt with on a daily basis. The fact is that it is only a quarter of the waste for which waste management facilities and planning permissions for them are required.

  186. So what in your view would be the right regulatory structure to allow us to take an overall view of all types of waste?
  (Mr Price) In terms of planning regulation? The Environment Agency obviously has the licensing responsibilities in relation to all facilities. As far as planning is concerned, all facilities need planning consent and they are therefore subject to consultative approval or otherwise processes and planning enforcement regimes.

  187. So are you saying any change is required in order to allow this coherent over-view?
  (Mr Price) The difficulty is looking at the planning side of the equation and having the information to be able to do it. There has long been a problem with information for waste planning purposes, it is better on household waste than any other area and we await the strategic waste management assessments, but without this essential information it is very difficult for local planning authorities effectively to plan for what is required.
  (Mr Hockney) We have consistently said as a Society that, yes, we recognise our responsibilities for waste policy planning and in order to produce waste local plans or waste policies which go into unitary plans we need an overall waste context for the specific area for which the waste local plan is being prepared. It is very difficult to prepare a waste local plan in a vacuum. The waste local plan is a land-use manifestation of a broader waste management strategy for that particular geographical area. Those strategies do not exist. The requirement to produce a waste management strategy under earlier legislation was abolished in 1995 in the Environment Act 1995. In many ways, possibly somewhat cynically, planners now see Government advising local authorities to produce municipal waste management strategies almost as a fall back, a desire to actually go back and produce some form of waste management strategy for a local authority area which will also assist in the production of a waste local plan.

  188. What role will the Regional Technical Advisory Bodies have in this process, just briefly?
  (Mr Price) It is very difficult to give a brief answer to that one.

  189. Perhaps we could come back to that a little bit later, if that is all right. Can I just pursue with you the question of the Landfill Tax. That was supposed to make landfill more difficult but there is some element that the Credit Scheme has been bribing local communities to be more willing to accept landfill. Do you think that the Credit Scheme is not working in the way that it should be?
  (Mr Price) I think we could express quite a bit of opinion on this one. If I can interpret your question as relating to is it making a difference in terms of does it make the planning process easier by reducing opposition, there may be some evidence in some places that that is the case. I think they are probably quite few and far between. The reality is, as we said at the start, waste developments are almost universally unpopular and even though a community may have seen some benefit in some way during the currency of the landfill, whether that is viewed as being something that outweighs the disadvantage or the perceived disadvantage of living next door to a waste management facility is perhaps questionable.

  190. What about sham recovery?
  (Mr Price) I am sorry, Chairman?

  191. What about sham recovery, is that a problem? Are people actually fiddling the system?
  (Mr Hockney) In terms of diverting waste from landfill to develop recreational facilities, golf courses or other sorts of facilities, which I am sure Members of the Committee have heard of, there has been an element of that which has been going on. We have been active in the Society in particularly informing district councils, who determine many of the planning applications which are made in Britain, to ensure that when they are examining planning applications which involve a change in ground levels that they look very carefully at those plans and impose the requisite conditions about contours or ground levels in order to control the importation of any material on to the site. There have been examples, and you may personally know them yourself, where because of the absence of appropriate planning conditions it has been possible to import waste on to sites and use it to raise levels and there has been some difficulty through the planning system in enforcing against that sort of activity.
  (Mr Price) Was that the burden of your question?

  192. Yes, I think that is it. What you are really saying is if you are going to have permission for a new golf course you have got to lay down very specifically in the planning process the contours that are going to be accepted so it does not just get higher and higher and higher.
  (Mr Price) A lot of inert waste has gone on to a lot of sites all around the country as a Landfill Tax avoidance measure.

  193. And that needs stopping. What about things like newspaper waste that can be spread and ploughed in, does that need to be regulated?
  (Mr Hockney) My understanding, Chairman, and you may wish to correct me on this, is that through the planning regime it is unlikely that would need planning permission. I think what we are addressing here is land spreading which is exempt from the site licensing regulations which are administered by the Environment Agency. Subject, again, to the particular proposal that you might have in mind, it may well be that there is very little planning control over that sort of activity. It may well relate to the scale of the operation and to the level of importation.

  194. Is that an area in which you think the law needs changing?
  (Mr Hockney) Definitely yes, Chairman.

  195. I want to come back to the issue of shadow planning. Is it possible for an authority to shadow plan an incineration facility just in case it is needed whilst they attempt to meet the much higher recycling targets? In other words, is there a case for the planning process being able to say if we do not achieve a recycling target of 50 per cent there will be a need for an incinerator and that incinerator should therefore be planned, but if it was clear to the public that the whole community achieved the recycling target, at whatever level, that incinerator would not be needed?
  (Mr Price) I do think that it would be very difficult to do that, Chairman. My earlier answer to a question I had not completed but what I was going to say was by 2020 the amount of material that may be landfill based on the proportion of the 1995 levels is really quite small in relation to what has to be handled even if we were to push, as is now being asked, more successful authorities up to, say, 40 per cent. Were we to achieve something like that level nationally by 2020 there would still be a huge gap.

  196. I understand the global case you are making, I am asking about the specific case of a local authority saying that in the plans they have is it possible for them to shadow plan a major plant like an incineration facility with various assumptions built into it?
  (Mr Price) I do not think an authority should plan for failure, which is what that implies, and I do not think that an authority should be anything less than open and honest with its community.
  (Mr Hockney) I would wish to underline that, Chairman. The issue of waste is a highly sensitive local issue. The message that I and my colleagues put down the line to any applicant for planning permission, as I said in an earlier statement, is one of openness and transparency with the local community. To suggest that there may be one potential solution but say to the community "but we are looking at others as well", whilst done in the best of interests could easily be misinterpreted by concerned members of the local community or action groups.
  (Mr Price) Local authorities will have to meet recycling and composting targets. They may fail, of course, but that is the objective that is being set for them. I am sure that you will find local authorities wanting to respond to that.

  197. Thirty-five per cent, with respect, is a great deal lower than is being achieved elsewhere in the world. If you are making it clear to a local community that they are going to get an incinerator if they cannot meet recycling targets that are quite challenging and require everyone's co-operation and investment in it of 50-60 per cent, for example, surely that is a better way to go?
  (Mr Price) I do think it is important for accurate information to be available. What is being achieved in recycling and composting in different parts of the world is not all that it is claimed to be necessarily and it is important that we understand the statistical basis on which they are calculated. In very small local communities undoubtedly some very high figures have been achieved but I think if you look at broader picture issues, such as what is being achieved in other European countries or in parts of North America, whilst we lag seriously behind as a nation what is being achieved by those, even if we were to achieve the targets that have been set for us there would be a huge gap between what we may landfill and what we may not.

  Mr Blunt: If they can achieve 59 per cent in Flanders, I do not see why we cannot here.

  198. Waste disposal authorities have to consider two things. They have to consider cost and they have to consider land use planning. In terms of cost, do you think it would be more democratic, open and transparent to consult the public, or tell the public, what it might cost for initial capital outlay to do kerbside collection, waste separation at source and so on and so forth, as opposed to mixed municipal waste going into incineration and what those initial costs might be to them and what they are longer term, so that you could actually present the members of the public with all these revenue costs and the capital costs something like 20 years on? That is one part of it because that is significant. You all do it, you are all thinking of costs, and certainly councillors are. On the other hand, land-use planning does not look at that. I have two questions there. Do you think PPG 10 is adequate for local authorities in assisting them to implement the strategy?
  (Mr Price) There are a lot of questions involved in that.

  Christine Butler: Basically two.

  199. I want a short answer!
  (Mr Price) I cannot give you that, Chairman, but I will be brief. Costs first. Waste disposal and collection costs in this country are incredibly cheap. In my authority, which has quite an advanced set of processes with a very high recycling and composting figure in particular, we charge the ratepayer £1 a week approximately, £1.16 a week. That is a ludicrously cheap service in my view for what is provided. We are going to have to contemplate much more expensive methods and people must be confronted with the real costs as part of the information which they also need to have on what options are available and what are the environmental and other impacts of that and whether we would be able to achieve compliance with Government and European requirements. In relation to PPG 10, the Planning Officers Society has been very closely involved in the consultative processes, the very drawn-out consultative processes which led to it, and we welcomed it of course, but we do have disappointments in it. We find it weak and brief, particularly in terms of the advice which is given on options and the impacts which may be associated with options. It is also weak in the role which it gives to and expects of Regional Technical Advisory Bodies, which are at the end of the day entirely voluntary, not co-ordinated, not funded and are advising the non-executive regional planning bodies.