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Domestic Waste: Waste Disposal

Volume 506: debated on Monday 1 March 2010

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government pursuant to the answer to the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield of 26 January 2010, Official Report, columns 737W, on domestic waste, whether his Department has issued guidance to local authorities on the counting of efficiency savings made as a consequence of moving from weekly to alternate weekly collections of household waste. (319108)

I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (John Healey) the then Minister for Local Government on 14 January 2009, Official Report, column 779W, to the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles).

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government pursuant to the answer of 19 January 2010, Official Report, column 290W, on local government: cost effectiveness, what proportion of the £550 million of efficiency savings he expects to come from more efficient waste collection. (319214)

The pre-Budget report sets out a number of areas where local government will be able to find significant efficiencies by 2012-13. It is for individual local authorities to make efficiencies based on local priorities and use of resources. Waste collection is an example of how they may do this.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government which local authorities had reported the implementation of alternate weekly collection of household waste as the source of an efficiency saving in the annual efficiency returns submitted to his Department on the latest date for which figures are available. (319233)

The Department does not collect information from councils about the value of efficiencies broken down by individual service sectors. Since 2008, councils have been required to report only the net total of current cash-releasing value for money gains that have been in effect since the start of the 2008-09 financial period.

In the 2004 spending review period which ended in 2007-08, councils were required to submit Annual Efficiency Statements, which included a breakdown by service area of efficiency savings. These categories included waste.

The most recent information available from Annual Efficiency Statements is for 2007-08 and I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (John Healey) the then Minister for Local Government to the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) on 29 October 2008, Official Report, column 1155W, on waste disposal.