Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what powers local authorities have to tackle vermin outbreaks in private properties.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Managing problems with rats and mice is the responsibility of the owner or occupier of the property where the problem occurs. Insofar as local authorities are owners and occupiers of property, they have the same powers to control rats and mice as any other owner or occupier.
To address public health risk, the Prevention of Damage by Pests Act 1949 makes local authorities responsible for ensuring that their districts are kept, so far as practicable, free from rats and mice. In meeting this obligation, a local authority may serve a notice on the owner or occupier of land requiring them to take such steps as may be specified in the notice to destroy rats and mice on their land. Where necessary, the local authority has the power to take those steps as specified in a notice themselves and recover from the owner or occupier any expenses reasonably incurred in doing so. The 1949 Prevention of Damage by Pests Act also requires occupiers of land, other than agricultural land, to give notice in writing to the local authority of rodent infestations.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to review the 2003 household waste mix model.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Following our consultation in 2019 on measures to improve consistency in recycling from businesses and households, the Environment Bill published in January 2020 sets out how the Government will legislate to require local authorities to collect recyclable household waste separately from other household waste so that the waste can be recycled or composted. The recyclable household waste to be collected will be metal, paper, glass, plastics, food and garden waste. Together with similar measures to increase recycling from businesses and other organisations, these changes will help to achieve ambitions set out in the Resources and Waste Strategy 2018 to increase the quantity and quality of recyclable material collected for recycling.
Asked by: Caroline Nokes (Conservative - Romsey and Southampton North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent estimate he has made of the amount of plastic waste being sent to landfill.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Permitted sites are required to submit their waste data to the Environment Agency (EA) and this represents the main data available on waste that goes to landfill. This data categorises waste according to the European Waste Catalogue (EWC).
Under EWC, only a limited number of categories are clearly identifiable as plastic waste. The EA was notified that 82,358 tonnes of waste identifiable as plastic was sent to landfill facilities in 2018.
However, the vast majority of waste received at landfill sites is reported as mixed waste, for example municipal waste. It will contain a proportion of plastic waste. The EA is not able to estimate plastic content of mixed waste and other EWC categories and cannot reliably provide the total plastic waste disposed to landfill.
In our Resources and Waste Strategy, we committed to landfilling 10% or less of the municipal waste generated by 2035 and to implementing measures that will improve the quality and quantity of plastic waste collected for recycling, and ultimately lead to less plastic waste sent to landfill. The Environment Bill sets out provisions to improve the separate collection of recyclable waste (including plastic packaging waste); for example, from 2023 all collectors of waste will be required to collect a core set of materials, including plastics, for recycling from households, non-domestic, and commercial and industrial premises.