Recycling a 'waste of time' unless more treatment centres are built

PEOPLE recycling their waste could be doing so in vain because it could still end up in landfill sites, a new report warns today.

The National Audit Office accused the Government of failing to build enough large-scale recycling centres or incinerators to meet a 2013 EU target to cut the amount put in landfill sites.

The spending watchdog stressed that incinerator schemes had been dogged by opposition from local residents and only two major waste treatment plants had become operational since 1999 - in east London and Leicester. A further 18 are yet to come on line and projects for new incinerators are facing delays of 19 months on average in getting consent.

The NAO said: "England is likely to meet its 2010 landfill reduction targets but to meet the 2013 target the Department (for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) will need to reduce substantially the time taken to procure projects and bring them into operation."

Tory MP Edward Leigh, chairman of the Commons public accounts committee, said there was a "real danger" that the EU target would be missed, which could lead to fines of hundreds of millions of pounds.

He added: "Local authorities that missed their individual targets for diverting waste from landfill would be substantially penalised by the Government and local payers of council tax would be clobbered in turn."

However, Paul Bettinson, chairman of the Local Government Association's environment board, blamed the Government, saying: "It has hit the council taxpayer with a £1.5billion bill by going back on its undertaking to refund money raised through landfill tax to local authorities."