Environment and Sustainability Budget announced (York Liberal Democrats)

York Liberal Democrats <info@yorklibdems.org.uk>

Environment and Sustainability Budget announced

January 3, 2006 4:29 PM

Cllr Andrew Waller, City of York Council's Executive Member for Environment and Sustainability, today announced the 2006/07 budget proposals for his portfolio. The proposals demonstrate the Lib Dem administration's commitment to providing quality environmental services, and making York even more eco-friendly.

A target recycling rate of 36% will be set for the year 2006/07, a 3-fold increase from 12% in 2002/3 when the Lib Dems took control of City of York. This will result from running the new alternate weekly collections for a full year, with plastic bottles and cardboard being introduced to the green box collection scheme, and achieving improved recycling tonnages from the Household Waste Recycling Sites.

Cllr Andrew Waller said "If we were recycling at the low rate we inherited, then the landfill tax charges would add another £½ Million to council tax, with a further £2 Million in fines due to the Government's new limits on how much waste councils can landfill.

"These are the costs that we would be facing now if we had not made investments in last year's budget, or made the changes to recycling collections. Efforts to minimise the growth in the annual increase in waste have paid off with the amount of waste now levelling off. However, we cannot take this for granted, and efforts will continue to help the residents of York to manage their waste.

"The council has received a very hard grant settlement from government, which even they acknowledge is £1.25 million less than we need. This has resulted in some hard choices having to be made. These include reducing staffing in some areas of the Environmental Services team which I recognise will put pressure on the remaining staff in these services.

"We will also have to consider increasing the charges on some of the services that we provide, such as the collection of bulky waste items, and a new £5 charge for the collection of fridges".

The proposals which will go to the Environment and Sustainability EMAP (Executive Member and Advisory Panel) on 11th January will include savings and growth items.

In a change to previous year's papers, proposals that were worked up by officers but were not recommended for approval will be included in the report.

A rationalisation of the air quality stations will see a targeting of resources on where they were needed.

Charges will be increased for the collection of bulky items from £20 to £25, but these will still cover the collection of up to 10 items.

Ongoing resources have been found for the recycling services provided by St Nicholas Field Project, which ran out of funding last year for its initial 1,400 household patch.

There have been changes in the budgets relating to flooding, as the current annual budget is able to cope with the normal rises in river levels, and extreme flood events would be funded via the council reserves due to the scale of the expenditure. Funds will need to be found to cover the reduction in the government grant for the "local levy". This is the part of Flood Defence funding which did not transfer directly to the Environment Agency, to which each local authority in the region contributes.