Taxpayers will get million-pound bill if government misses waste target – NAO

Many large-scale incineration and recycling schemes can no longer raise money due to credit crunch, warn Whitehall auditors
David Hencke, Westminster correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 January 2009 00.05 GMT

Council tax payers could be landed with the bill for hundreds of millions of pounds of fines in four years' time because the government will miss mandatory EU targets to halve the dumping of waste in landfill sites, the National Audit Office warns today.
A report by Whitehall's auditors says a big delay in implementing a programme of building incinerators and large-scale recycling schemes has now been compounded by the effects of the credit crunch on raising money from banks and getting planning permission.
The government's solution to meeting the new waste targets has been to try to raise cash from banks under the private finance initiative but many of the large-scale schemes can no longer get money because of the credit crunch.
Since many of the new schemes involve building large incinerators, they are also running into opposition from local residents, resulting in an average delay of over 19 months to get planning permission. As it can take between five and nine years for a new plant to come on stream this means that the government is now in real danger of missing the target.
According to the auditors, only two big waste-treatment plants in England have come on stream since the programme was launched in 1999 and another nine projects have been approved. A further 18 are still in the pipeline.
The two completed schemes are in Leicester and east London. Other schemes for incinerators planned in 2003 and 2006 have not even started, including Newhaven for East Sussex council, Nottinghamshire and Cornwall.
The report says: "England is likely to meet its 2010 landfill-reduction targets but to meet the 2013 target the Department [for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] will need to reduce substantially the time taken to procure projects and bring them into operation ... It will not be met if there continue to be programme delays or the infrastructure built does not work as efficiently as expected."
Edward Leigh, the Tory chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, said: "The department sat on its hands for four years after the EU in 1999 set England a testing timetable for reducing the amount of biodegradable rubbish sent to landfill.
"There is a very real danger of our failing to meet the EU's 2013 waste-reduction target. Such failure might result in the UK being punished with fines to the tune of several hundred millions ... Local authorities that missed their individual targets for diverting waste from landfill would be substantially penalised by the government and local payers of council tax would be clobbered in turn."
Councils also warned that they faced problems in meeting targets. Paul Bettison, the chairman of the Local Government Association's environment board, said: "There remains a pressing need to do more to reduce this country's reliance on dumping rubbish in the ground. Britain throws more waste into landfill than any other country in the EU, and these sites are expensive for the council taxpayer and damaging to the environment.
"Councils are pulling out the stops to deliver projects that will deal with waste. But the reality is the government has hit the council taxpayer with a £1.5bn bill over the next three years by going back on its undertaking to refund money raised through landfill tax to local authorities. This is cash that could be used to build the facilities that are needed to divert waste away from landfill."