Directive prompts national strategy

15 November 2006

A new support programme to help ‘accelerate the building of the infrastructure needed to treat residual waste’ was launched by the Government last week.
The new ‘waste infrastructure development programme’ has been established following an Office of Government Commerce recommendation that the intense procurement activity in the four years up to the first Landfill Directive targets needed national co-ordination. It had warned that congestion in the flow of waste management deals could hinder attempts to get the necessary facilities in place.
The programme will monitor delivery of the waste treatment necessary to meet Landfill Directive targets which take effect in 2010/11 and 2012/13, and help local authorities and waste companies ‘to work together in solving a national challenge’.
John Burns, director of the waste implementation programme, which will oversee the WIDP, stressed: ‘Only a combination of recycling, minimisation and building the infrastructure will allow us to meet our Landfill Directive obligations.’ Part of the WIP’s task of managing the contracts in the pipeline would be to advise the Government on organising the timely provision of funding.
But while the action plan states that the programme is dependent on government funding levels, a ‘mixed economy’ approach was needed, including private-finance initiative and other private funding and prudential borrowing.
But the County Surveyors’ Society, while supporting in principle the promotion of a ‘mixed economy’ approach, stressed the need for the revenue as well as capital costs to be met.
David Harvey, chair of the CSS waste committee, said the Government’s work to estimate the capital cost of necessary treatment plants – expected to be in the range of £5-6bn – overlooked gate fee costs for the new facilities.

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