Western Isles Area Waste Plan

Inevitably, implementation of the BPEO will result in the cost of MSW management in the Western Isles increasing substantially. A number of major new waste management facilities will require substantial capital investment, and the introduction of more complex collection systems will incur additional revenue costs. Extra finance is required to assist CNES deliver the new infrastructure, and also to fund the extensive campaigns required to change behaviour patterns in support of new source-segregated collection schemes.

A detailed set of indicative costs were developed during the initial stages of implementation planning. Consultants Enviros-Aspinwall have estimated the total project cost to be £3.2m pa from 2002 till 2020, £0.91m pa higher than the current budget of £2.29m pa. The figures allow for segregated collection from both householders and trade premises, but do not include the costs of collection, recovery or disposal of non-MSW. Landfill disposal costs are assumed to remain constant over time – except for landfill tax, which increases to £34/tonne by 2007.

There is a range of potential sources through which these costs could be met, and a number of different ways in which the new infrastructure and services could operate – e.g. through a private finance initiative. However, given the relatively small scale of the required developments, delivery of the Western Isles BPEO is unlikely to attract much in the way of private finance – the onus will fall on the local authority to take forward the required developments in the long term.

The Scottish Executive has allocated £230 million for the financial years 2003/04, 2004/05, 2005/06 through the Strategic waste Fund to assist with the additional costs of implementing AWPs and Local Authorities have been invited to bid for funds to implement their part of the Area Waste Plan. Partnership working with non-profitmaking organisations may, to some extent, complement this, but any major outstanding balance will need to come largely from other public sources. Aside from the Scottish Executive an increasing number of such sources exist including:

The successful implementation of the BPEO is wholly reliant on sufficient additional levels of funding being secured.

The focus of the process to establish the BPEO was to find the optimum methods of waste management that as a minimum will meet the three landfill reduction targets set by the Landfill Directive (i.e. permitted to landfill 75%, 50% and 35% of 1995 levels of biodegradable municipal waste sent to landfill, by 2010, 2013, and 2020 respectively). In the light of the draft AWPs published in spring 2002, the Executive has calculated that an interim overall national target of recycling and composting of 25% of waste collected by local authorities is achievable by 2006 by collective implementation of AWPs. It is expected that the delivery of the plans will contribute to this target by the early implementation of recycling and composting systems. The indicative costings set out in Table 3.3 will be further refined in the Local Authority’s Implementation Plan for the purpose of the Strategic Waste Fund bid. Further information on national costings is provided in the National Waste Plan (2003).