Responsive mode - Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF)

Introduction

The Government intends to fund a programme allowing businesses to bid for specialist assistance to consider and build a business case to innovate in their business. Tenders have not been invited to manage this project and the service is not currently available. This note summarises how the scheme might operate.

Background

The Aggregates Levy reduces demand for primary aggregates by increasing the costs and makes the use of recycled and secondary materials more viable.

The Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund uses some of the revenue from the Aggregate Levy to further address the environmental impacts associated with quarrying operations (noise, dust, visual intrusion, loss of amenity and damage to biodiversity).

The Fund is spent through various agencies including the Department for Transport. For 2005/7 ALSF funding is available to help industry introduce innovations having better understood the potential benefits to improve efficiency, competitiveness, safety and environmental performance in the road transport of aggregates.

Eligible businesses

Businesses are likely to be eligible if 25% or more of their work involves transporting qualifying aggregates. They might typically work for a quarry operator, logistics company, an aggregates consumer or be an owner driver. Qualifying aggregate is that which has paid the levy or recycled aggregate that is substituting material that would have paid the levy.

Benefits

This is a new type of programme for the DfT so is likely to start small and review progress to see if it is attracting innovative ideas and adding value. The measures of success will be successful pilots of innovations producing good quality data that allows the costs and benefits to be quantified. A successful project will be where a business achieves a performance improvement and others are able to adopt a generically similar step change.