[Thursday 28th November 2024]
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The National Association of Waste Disposal Officers (NAWDO) welcomes the circulation of packaging Extended Producer Responsibility (pEPR) payment notifications. Local authorities have been seeking certainty on the magnitudes of these payments for some time to enable budgets to be set for 2025/26.
NAWDO looks forward to also receiving further information on the commitment made in the Government’s Autumn 2024 Budget regarding the guarantee of this funding should there be a shortfall in producer payments. Local authorities will need to understand any cashflow impacts that may arise from this, particularly as the pEPR payments are already condensed into the second half of the 2025/26 financial year.
While NAWDO is pleased that the financial taps of EPR are being turned on, our members are eager to see a road map established to ensure that the principle of ‘full net cost recovery’ is fully embedded in future payment calculations. Modelling payments around benchmarks or average costs inevitably creates ‘winners and losers’, and we do not believe that this is appropriate or sustainable.
In addition, modelling payments around benchmarks or average costs fails to recognise that local authorities seek best value in procurement processes, and will do so under prevailing market conditions and the national policy landscape at the time they go out to tender. For waste treatment and disposal contracts, this can mean that the prices available to one local authority could be quite be different to those that another can achieve even just a year later. NAWDO believes that is fundamentally wrong to underpay a local authority on the grounds that it is ‘not efficient’, when the prices within its contract were those available at the time it needed to put new services in place.
NAWDO is pleased to see that work is developing on future effectiveness metrics. Understanding how the pEPR regime will evolve is essential, so that local authorities can plan the delivery of future services to achieve the best outcomes for local people. However, it is important that the pEPR regime takes full account of both local circumstances for individual authorities, as well as limitations in the powers and influence that they have over recycling performance. NAWDO urges the Government to engage closely with local authorities to ensure that future effectiveness metrics and Improvement Action Plan processes are fair, fit for purpose, and adequately take account of the need for local democracy and decision making.
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