Recycling and Waste

£135 Million Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund in England

• The third round of the NWMRF
• Guidance
• Contacting Defra

An announcement was made on 20th October 2003 inviting Local Authorities to bid for funding from a further £135 million to be made available for sustainable waste management initiatives across England. Details are available in this news item. The funds will be made available from the Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund with £90m available in 2004/05 and £45m in 2005/06.

The fund has previously allocated financial support to categories such as 'low performance' and 'community initiatives'. Life has moved on - for example, the 2004-05 and 2005-06 funding is focused on the progress that authorities should be making towards delivering 2005-06 performance standards from a minimum of 10% performance in 2003-04. We therefore propose a simplification of the previous approach with a single 'general projects' fund that is intended to support the best local authority projects whether they come from lower or higher performers.

The other significant change to the fund compared with previous years is an enhanced approach to partnership proposals, specifically focused at supporting those authorities who are tackling large volumes of waste.

A copy of the Terms of Reference for the National Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund Advisory Panel are available here.

The third round of the NWMRF

We have now announced those projects that we will be supporting from the third and final round of the National Waste Minimisation and Recycling Fund. These projects fall into two categories:

• Partnerships;
• General projects;

Partnerships

In December 2003 we announced the group of 14 Partnership Projects that would be eligible for up to £5m of funding over the next two financial years and these can be found here (11 KB).

These Waste Disposal Authority led initiatives will cover 7.5 million tonnes of England's annual waste production and will also benefit from Government Support services that are designed to help to deliver high quality environmental solutions. These two year programmes of work in the relevant local authorities will expand the recycling and composting infrastructure including new and enhanced kerbside collection schemes, household waste sites and recycling facilities. The partnership proposals are also designed to deliver long-term waste management solutions to authorities with no existing facilities.

General Projects

Added to these partnerships, we have now approved a further 51 schemes under the general projects heading that will receive support.

Of these, 23 have been offered support on condition that the relevant local authorities work with the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) in order to develop an appropriate communications strategy to support their project, and are listed here (7 KB). The remaining 28 projects, listed here (12 KB), have been made unconditional offers as their communications strategy are already of the required standard. In both cases the funding allocations are provisional and are dependent on agreeing capital costs to achieve best value for money and resolving any outstanding details.

The general projects will benefit from up to £1.5m of funding for 2004/05 and 2005/06 and will implement a range of sustainable waste management solutions such as kerbside recycling and the development of Household Waste Recycling Centres. They will provide improved waste services to over 2 million additional households and divert approximately 300,000 tonnes of waste from landfill per annum.

For further information on these projects, see our news release http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2004/040218d.htm.

Guidance

Outside London

Guidance for local authorities outside London wishing to bid for funding can be found here (60 KB). In completing this local authorities should make use of the workbook ( - Excel 95, 20 KB). Local authorities should ensure that they include this completed workbook as part of their submission. You will probably wish to download and save this file to your own computer before completing it.

Information is available on our Help page about downloading, saving or reading Adobe Acrobat or Microsoft Excel documents.

Should you require further information about the distribution of the Fund, please contact either Matt Cook on 020 7082 8844 or Simon Mander on 020 7082 8846.

London authorities

Ministers have decided that the existing arrangements for London will continue for the next two years. London will be allocated £13.7 million in 2004/05 and £6.85 million in 2005/06. This allocation will be administered jointly by the Greater London Authority (GLA), Association of London Government (ALG), and London Waste Action (LWA). The partnership's Joint Implementation Team will issue separate guidance to London authorities about their application process. The team can be contacted at:

London Waste Action
1 Hobhouse Court
Suffolk Street
London
SW1Y 4HH
or see www.londonwasteaction.org

Contacting Defra

If you want further information that is not covered by these pages, you can contact us by e-mail at 140m.applications@defra.gsi.gov.uk.