In my short period of tenure here at LARAC, I always find the reminder to submit my blog a refreshing experience, as it gives me an opportunity to reflect and summarise what I’ve been doing over the past month. I never cease to be amazed at the different contacts and exchanges that arrive every day into our email inboxes: requests to provide data, take part in projects, recommend best practice councils, as well as all the job adverts from our member councils. It is noticeable that with the relaxation on testing and isolation rules we are getting more invitations to future physical events and our world is returning to a new kind of normal.
Here at LARAC Towers the conference planning season is in full swing with our event partner ROAR B2B (or EMG as we used to know them) as we plan the Welsh, Scottish and UK conferences for this year. We are also looking at more regional events so you may have something closer to home to look forward to soon.
Three policy consultations took up quite a bit of thinking time.
First there was the national fly tipping and litter prevention strategy for Scotland. I would like to thank our Scotland rep Stephen Gilfillan who helped me put this together. This has now been sent to our Scottish members and I am waiting for any feedback to be able to collate the final LARAC response before the deadline.
Next, and I will consider these two together because I believe them to be inextricably linked, are the consultations from Defra on digital waste tracking (UK wide) and the registration of waste carriers, brokers and dealers (England only). The improper and illegal transportation and handling of waste causes such a blight to our communities, whether it be a few black bags left on a roadside, a commercial fly tip, or a badly operated waste site causing odours or creating a fire risk. The disjointed approach we currently work under must change. Digital waste tracking (DWT) will mean that no waste movement goes unrecorded and will provide much more accurate and up to date information to support regulatory oversight and enforcement action. It follows that we therefore need a stronger system to legalise who can transport and handle waste. This needs to be efficient and effective and prevent avoidance and low-level criminal activity. The proposal to require an element of technical competence to be able to apply is welcome. The bar needs to be high to get rid of Facebook “Man with Van” operators and the penalties for non-compliance need to be at a level where it just makes it unaffordable to do anything but the right thing. We have an opportunity to clean up the mess we are in, and I hope all LARAC member councils respond to these consultations.
As a final thought, LARAC has about 3 in 4 of the UK councils or local government bodies (waste partnerships, joint authorities) responsible for waste and recycling functions as members. But that means that 25% of them aren’t and we are keen to understand why not. So, if you happen to meet another council who aren’t members of LARAC, please recommend us to them if you want to, or ask them to visit our website and get in touch to find out more.
