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  David Sumberg MEP   

BRINGING COMMONSENSE TO BRUSSELS

Date:  27/01/2003 

 

 

FRIDGE FIASCO: North West councils face funding crisis

 

Conservative Euro MP David Sumberg is warning new research has revealed that councils across the North West face huge shortfalls in Government funding to pay for the disposal of unwanted fridges.

From January 1 2002 European Union regulations came into force ruling all ozone depleting CFCs in the UK's unwanted fridges must be removed. Previously Britain had disposed of fridges in crushers but they must now be crushed in units which capture the CFCs.

When Labour's Environment Minister Michael Meacher agreed the regulation in 1998 he mistakenly believed the law would only apply to industrial fridges.

Mr Sumberg said Conservative Party research, conducted by JONATHAN SAYEED MP, has revealed that although the Government has allocated £40m to councils, to help meet the cost of fridge disposal, there is an estimated shortfall of at least £27 million per year in England.

 

“This year, for example, Lancashire County Council is facing a shortfall of £452,000,' he said. "And ultimately council taxpayers are the ones who are going to have to foot the bill.  The Government has bungled the issue of fridge disposal from day one.  Michael Meacher made a howling blunder when he signed up to this EU directive without fully understanding its implications - a fact the Government now admits. Now councils across the North West are faced with an excruciating headache. Based on our survey of councils covering a third of England the shortfall in Whitehall funding could be as much as £830,000 per council. On top of this, councils also face extra waste collection costs."

Mr Sumberg said he was also concerned there will be an increase in fly tipped fridges because of the extra disposal costs.

"Electrical retailers are now refusing to take old fridges in exchange for new appliances leaving the burden of waste disposal on councils,' he said. "With all this extra cost there is a greater temptation for unscrupulous members of the public to resort to fly tipping.

"We have already seen how the high cost of disposing vehicles can lead to the menace of abandoned cars. There is now a serious concern we will see the same pattern with fridges. As well as being unsightly and environmentally unsafe dumped fridges pose a danger to the public particularly children. And this has all been caused by a ludicrous error betraying the increasingly familiar incompetence at the heart of New Labour."

Sample Survey

Council	Government Grant	Actual Cost  (to waste disposal authority)	Shortfall (to waste disposal authority)
Bedfordshire	£264,921	£460,000	£195,079
Buckinghamshire	£312,480	£498,000	£185,520
Cambridgeshire	£362,873	£630,873	£268,000
Cheshire	£442,130	£620,000	£177,870
Cornwall	£319,758	£500,000	£180,242
Devon	£455,689	£1,056,000	£600,311
Gloucestershire	£363,805	£661,500	£297,695
Hampshire	£842,677	£1,200,000	£357,323
Hertfordshire	£790,169	£1,100,000	£309,831
Kent	£972,860	£1,800,000	£827,140
Lancashire	£797,677	£1,250,000	£452,323
Leicestershire	£375,353	£602,000	£226,647
Lincolnshire	£398,927	£497,640	£98,713
Norfolk	£517,873	£1,250,000	£732,127
North Yorkshire	£362,434	£443,596	£81,162
Northamptonshire	£429,713	£565,000	£135,287
Northumberland	£211,024	£355,550	£144,526
Somerset	£312,750	£780,000	£467,250
Staffordshire	£521,961	£710,000	£188,039
Suffolk	£430,333	£900,000	£469,667
Warwickshire	£331,811	£423,000	£91,189
West Sussex	£535,815	£1,000,000	£464,185
Wiltshire	£259,965	£547,500	£287,535
Average per council	£461,435	£776,116	£314,681
Total above	£10,612,998	£17,850,659	£7,464,700
Estimated total for England			£27,278,479

 

The estimated total for England was calculated as follows: the Government has allocated £40 million this year in grant for the costs; the allocation of £11 million of this grant has resulted in a shortfall of £7.5 million; extrapolating this across the full £40 million allocation, suggests a total shortfall of £27 million [£7.5 million x (£40 million ¸ £11 million)].

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