The Local Government Association’s campaign for councils to be empowered to charge householders directly for waste gained a boost last week.
Environment secretary David Miliband told the LGA conference in Bournemouth that he was ‘personally interested’ in its idea that waste collection authorities could reduce waste volumes and increase recycling participation by charging for the amount of waste residents produced.
Miliband claimed that ‘the failure to recycle is essentially an example of anti-social behaviour – imposing costs on the rest of society by your own behaviour’. He said a variable charge could be part of a required ‘new framework of citizenship rights and responsibilities, in respect of the environment’.
He asked the LGA and local authorities for more detail about the pros and cons of household waste charging, and pledged to ‘take account of this, alongside Sir Michael Lyons’ findings, to determine whether there could be benefits for England’. Lyons will back the idea in his final report, he revealed last month (Surveyor, 15 June).
The LGA stance is that without stronger incentives for participation in kerbside schemes, recycling rates will not rise fast enough to meet the European Union landfill Directive targets. It has highlighted how the £150-per-tonne fines councils face would be passed on to local taxpayers.
Chairman of the LGA, Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, told delegates: ‘For decades, people have been used to being able to throw their rubbish away without worrying about the consequences.
‘Those days are now over, local authorities must be given discretionary powers to help encourage people to take more responsibility for the way they throw their rubbish away.’ But Miliband’s intervention was criticised by the Association for Public Service Excellence chief executive, Paul O’Brien, as ‘making policy on the hoof’. He said: ‘We need to think of how charging strategies can be fairly dealt with for some of the most excluded, and for larger families.’