Tory Policy Vacuum for Waste

At present Surrey County Council has no coherent policy towards waste at all. There are good ideas (e.g. about joint working with the districts - which should have commenced years ago), and the previous portfolio holder produced a "vision for waste". These are interesting thoughts but there is still no policy!

Under the Conservative administration the County Council produced a defective Waste Local Plan in 1997. In 1999 a contract was granted to SITA, under the banner of Surrey Waste Management Ltd. for the waste disposal function.

Although the contract gave appropriate weight to minimisation, reuse and recycling and to the reduction in volumes put in holes in the ground (landfill) it has proved to be too sympathetic to large waste handling plant and to incineration.

Three applications for large incinerators were submitted in 2001 (two of them from Surrey's contractor) and all three were rejected, either by the County's planning committee or following judicial review.

Meanwhile, the South East England Regional Assembly has produced a draft regional strategy for waste which appears likely to give the region the power to tell Surrey what disposal policy to adopt. There is a Surrey draft structure plan which may also limit the choices available for the revised Waste Local Plan - and the County Council and the Boroughs and Districts are at last collaborating on a possible joint approach to the handling of municipal waste.

County Councillor Tom Sharp says, "These problems - which began in 1997 with a defective waste local plan, then continued in 1999 with what has proved to be a defective contract - were the sole responsibility of the Conservative administration. It is unacceptable for the present policy vacuum to continue for so long."