Speech by Joan Ruddock MP launching guidance on waste incentive schemes, London — 19 June 2008
I’m Joan Ruddock; I’m the Minister for waste, amongst other things, and I’m absolutely delighted that you have come along today. You are quite a small group and that is by intention – we have not invited bags of people to come; you are virtually all the people that we invited because we thought it would be a good opportunity at this point where we are issuing a consultation – our draft guidance – that we had a discussion with people like yourselves, and any greater number we wouldn’t be able to have a discussion in the time we have available. So that’s to explain who you are.
I’m, as I said, Joan Ruddock, Minister for Waste, and I have Sophia and Sarah up here who are officials who have been working absolutely I don’t know how many hours how many weeks how many months but for a very, very long time on these issues and will be assisting you and responding to all your questions.
We’ve taken the powers in the Climate Change Bill to have five, up to five pilots run by local authorities to try out waste incentive schemes. We hope that the Bill, which is just going into Parliament now – into the Commons that is, it’s already been in the Lords – will gain Royal Assent in the autumn this year. If we do that then we can have the authorities come forward to get approved to hopefully start operating as soon as the spring of next year. So that’s basically the framework.
We wanted to involve people now and to issue the draft guidance at this stage so that there’s plenty of opportunity for discussion. And many people I know have been concerned or confused about what is it exactly the Government wants us to do. So we’ve got this opportunity and time for people to be able to explore that further. In the schemes themselves there will be much flexibility for local authorities to design and produce the sort of scheme that is best suited to their own circumstances. So again it’s important that people take the opportunity to take time to explore what is going to work. Within eight weeks of Royal Assent we’ll need local authorities in the first instance to have submitted the schemes that they would like to put forward.
And basically the schemes, as I think you all know, are ones that will reward those who recycle the most and produce the least residual waste. They can be reward-only schemes, but it’s most likely, I think, from what local authorities have told us in the past, that you would like to have both reward and charge schemes, so that those who are producing the most residually waste and not doing the at least average recycling are the ones who would make payment.
Schemes must be revenue neutral and some local authorities already have said to us that this rather strange because how on earth are they going to pay for their schemes? Well we believe the schemes will be paid for if there is long term roll out – and that’s a big if – but if there were to be then those schemes would, we think, be paid for by the saving that local authorities would make.
But because we can’t demonstrate, except for experience from overseas, what gain there would be for the local authority financially, these pilots will be based on some grants from the Government so that local authorities in this piloting stage will not be bearing the full cost of putting in the pilot. We’ve got a significant sum of money but it will be for local authorities to demonstrate what monies they need in order to set up the schemes and make the schemes work.
But the monies that are raised in charges from a charge scheme, those monies, as I’ve indicated cannot be used by the local authority for any other purpose than return to the residents who are therefore given rebates. And those rebates can be linked to the council tax or not linked to the council tax – another option that will be available to local authorities.
We’ve got six pieces of guidance in draft, which is what we will be consulting upon and which we hope you will take away. Our aim has been to develop guidance which will help local authorities understand how to design, how to set up and how to run a waste incentive scheme. It’s intended to set out the kinds of things local authorities will need to consider when submitting a proposal. And I would emphasise that this is draft guidance, so of course, by definition, when we get responses to the draft we will amend if that seems the right thing to do. So we will be very keen to hear from you.
The final version of the guidance will be produced once the Bill receives Royal Assent, so again we’ve got time on that. The deadline for comments on five of the six papers is 25 July, and a slightly earlier date of the 11th of July for the paper which is on a good recycling service. A good recycling service we deem to be necessary if there’s going to be an incentive pilot, and we need to do statutory consultation on the recycling scheme and that is why we need to have comments by the earlier date – so that we can then go to statutory consultation.
So, that will, as I said, give us the time to do that. I’m today writing to all the Chief Executives of local authorities – that’s England-only of course – inviting them to put forward their proposals to pilot a scheme. And, as I said initially, the scheme that any local authority wishes to put up is one designed by the local authority within the legal framework that we’ve created. And we have tried to provide as much flexibility as possible. Local authorities will be entitled to trial different types of schemes, and to apply them across one or more of their areas, and to choose which households would be covered. Because we do know that it is unlikely that every are of every local authority and every type of household will be well suited to schemes of this kind.
Today we’ve got officials here, as I’ve indicated already, and officials from WRAP and we are also very happy to talk to you about the details of these schemes. What I would say is that I would encourage any local authority to come forward to discuss your thinking, however early and however sketchy it is. Because this is the key time for us to be able to explore what is actually going to work in these schemes, what is going to be appropriate and what Government can do in terms of support.
So I’ll just stop there. You haven’t had the benefit of looking at this documents but I know you’ve come here already with many questions in your minds and possibly ideas and suggestions you want to put to us, so we’re literally here now to listen to what you have to say, to answer questions that you’ve got and to try to move us forward so that when this draft guidance is out in the wider domain we have people who are more informed about what the Government is proceeding to do.
Further information
Page published: 20 June 2008