Incinerators
Communities and Local Government

Neil Carmichael (Stroud, Conservative)

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what recent assessment he has made of existing provision of incineration capacity for the disposal of municipal waste; and how the effect on capacity from proposed incineration plants will be (a) calculated and (b) judged in terms of planning decisions.

Nicholas Boles (Grantham and Stamford, Conservative)

The Government has made no recent assessment. However, in 2010 the Government published an assessment of Private Finance Initiative grants for local government-funded waste treatment infrastructure, which included an analysis of likely waste arisings and treatment capacity for the purposes of meeting the 2020 EU Landfill Directive target. The Environment Agency also published in 2011 a report setting out the locations of permitted waste management facilities in England and activities they carry out.

In line with national planning policy for waste management set out in Planning Policy Statement 10: ‘Planning for Sustainable Waste Management’, it is for local authorities, working together, to set out through their local plans their ambitions for additional waste management capacity, based on an assessment of existing and forecast waste arisings. Local authorities should then monitor arisings and review progress against their plans, to enable them to adapt to changing circumstances if required.

Planning legislation requires decisions to be taken in line with the development plan for the area, unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Where a proposal for an energy recovery facility is consistent with an up-to-date local plan, the expectation is that permission should be granted without delay, subject to consideration of the merits of the particular planning application.