Coming back to LARAC as an interim CEO is like revisiting a well-remembered pub where I enjoyed a wonderful evening with good friends – a happy place to return to full of familiar faces.
During November I have been shadowing Lee and learning from Jenny to get to a position where December 1st would see a seamless transition, like a swan swimming majestically across a lake but, thankfully, with no sight of my frantically paddling legs. And so far, it seems to have worked. I haven’t broken anything behind the scenes, and I’ve managed to produce the Defra HWRC survey out of Survey Monkey and will do the next HGV driver one at the end of this week. There have been meetings with Defra and WRAP and policy discussions about garden waste and paper. Two consultations have come along about single use plastics and the future of the landfill tax. It was never going to be dull!
But there is a job to be done and a deadline to meet. LARAC Ltd our new not for profit company needs new staff following the departure of Lee and Diane (our former policy support officer) and the future retirement in 2022 of Jenny. The old A-Team will no longer be here, and we need to forge a new LARAC to take us through the interesting and challenging times ahead. New legislation and statutory guidance are coming, and we need a LARAC that articulates the concerns of local authority waste and recycling services, defends our red lines and seeks compromise with others in our sector to ensure that what we get works for us and for the greater good.
We need staff who will carry on the excellent work done every day by Lee and Jenny and maintain their enthusiasm and dedication to keep LARAC relevant and influential. Part of that is to review, refine and develop the support we offer to our members.
One aspect of that is the new series of webinars we are producing with EMG to debate the issues of the day that are relevant to LARAC members. Our first one this month presents the findings of our research project that we commissioned from SOENECS into the proposal to bring in universal free garden waste collections. This shows how we intend to keep adding value to your membership. We also have our amazing award winners who have insightful stories to tell you and we will bring more of them to you through these webinars as well as through our features, see today’s Hillingdon and NHS feature.
The years ahead, with the implementation of the policies in RaWS and beginning to understand what actions we can take to tackle climate change, will be watershed years for those of us in the resource management sector. The changes will engender new and wide-ranging debate as so many people will be affected at the same time on so many fronts. It won’t be just a single council making service changes on their own. It will be sector wide involving local authorities, private waste companies, manufacturers and retailers and LARAC will be there representing you at the forefront of all the issues. And it will create a new generation of local authority waste and recycling professionals whose enthusiasm and creativity will build the underpinning foundation of tomorrow’s world of resource management in our country.
