7 Information on Waste.
7.1 Paragraph 20 of PPG 10 states that Waste Planning Authorities will need information on projected waste arisings, recycling and recovery levels and the extent of existing facilities in order to formulate policies and proposals for waste management facilities in development plans, and in deciding individual planning applications. It is vitally important that the information on waste arisings is reliable and accurate to help formulate the Local Plan’s policies and proposals.
7.2 The principal source of waste information is the Environment Agency. Over the last three years the Agency has published a number of reports on waste information including in October 2000 the Strategic Waste Management Assessment for the North East (SWMA). This report was based upon a National Waste Production Survey, which involved data collection from the industrial and commercial waste sector. Whilst the survey produced valuable data at the regional level, it displayed several anomalous results for County Durham, suggesting that overall, the data should be used with caution below regional level. The SWMA explained that the sample size of the survey does not support high levels of precision at the local level.
7.3 Unfortunately, with the exception of the municipal waste stream, currently available information on waste arisings for County Durham is largely inaccurate and unreliable. Until this situation is rectified, the amount of waste that is likely to need to be managed has been forecast using waste deposits information, provided by the Environment Agency, together with available data on waste recovery. The County Council recognises the shortcomings of using this information and will monitor and update the forecasts throughout the Plan process, as and when reliable information becomes available.
7.4 In addition, the overall impression of available facilities to manage waste arisings in the County could be misleading as sites will not operate to their permitted maximum for waste recovery and recycling. Additionally, there may be an element of double counting as much of the material that is currently received at Transfer Facilities and Household Waste Recycling Centres sites is simply transferred onto landfill sites in the County.
7.5 There are 45 categories of exempted activities from the licensing regime. In County Durham alone, there are hundreds of sites accepting waste which are exempt from the licensing regime. These can vary from individual chemist shops to large scale industrial units and take a significant proportion of waste arisings. However, the Environment Agency is unable to estimate the types and quantities of waste these sites accept, due to problems with existing legislation.
7.6 In order to establish the level of waste management facilities necessary to manage the various waste streams within the County, forecasts of the projected waste management requirement have been prepared. These forecasts will be used to identify deficiencies in the current waste management structure and aid the identification of the need for any new facilities in the County.
Annual Waste Management Requirement (including projected imports).
7.7 In order that the data on waste can be regularly reviewed and updated, a technical paper is produced separately to the Plan detailing the assumptions used by the County Council and providing projections of waste arisings over the Plan period.