Draft Waste Enforcement (England and Wales) Regulations 2018

Liz Twist Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 General Committees

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.

Far from being obscure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud said, these regulations are of real importance to people in my Blaydon constituency. The detail may be obscure, but the issue is real. In my constituency, we have two active landfill sites very close to urban areas, in Blaydon and in Ryton, which I should say is the ward I represent on Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council. In 2015, I faced a major issue with a litter escape from one of the landfill sites. The site is in a rural area, just off the built-up areas; litter escaped from the site and still festoons the trees, hedges and fields around it, despite litter-pickers. It is impossible to get a cherry-picker up into a tree on a rural road.

There are real problems, and there is absolute outrage among the community that that could be allowed to happen. I talked to the Environment Agency, which advised me that these regulations were under consideration. I now have the privilege of being able to comment as a Member of Parliament on the regulations that were so important to us in 2015.

That was not the end of the story, because not far from that site was another landfill site that has, for many years, caused odour problems. We may not be talking about odour in detail here, but let us be honest: we all know that waste, when it is rotting, produces gases and odour. There is no getting away from that, and it is a real nuisance to the local community. We have had odours for many years from both sites, but we had a major problem last year at one of them, when it was flooded and there were really awful smells.

I commend the Environment Agency officers who have worked closely with me as a local councillor, and with the local authority, to do what they can to enforce regulations. However, it has become clear to us as a community that existing regulations are not powerful enough, and that enforcing them has cost the agency a lot of money—more than it has taken in fees. This is a very real problem, so I am pleased that there will be additional money for the agency; I hope some of it will come from increased charges on the landfill operators, on the “polluter pays” principle.

Let me give an example that shows clearly why operators should be made to pay for problems at sites. For three months in 2016, there was a horrible, sulphurous odour hanging over my community. People had real concerns about their health. We had discussions with the Environment Agency and even Public Health England, such was the level of concern. I am glad to say that the site in question has closed down and been capped, so hopefully there will be no more odours from it. However, there are still smells coming from another landfill site. As recently as Friday, I met the Environment Agency and the local authority to discuss what we could do to end them.

There are real problems. My constituents and I cannot understand why the Environment Agency cannot just tell an operator to shut down when it is not operating properly and is causing problems. We need to get hold of this. There is also a bigger issue to do with ensuring that landfill sites are not too close to built-up and residential areas. Some people in my constituency live very close to landfill sites. Solving that problem is a desirable objective, although it may not fall within our debate today. If possible, we should end landfill sites altogether, because they are not good for the environment in any way—but that is another campaign.

I welcome the increased powers in the draft regulations, although I would have liked to have seen even greater powers for the Environment Agency. This really matters to people in my constituency, and it has mattered for a long time. I am sure that other hon. Members will have constituency experience of the same issues, including landfill and fly-tipping.

I welcome the draft regulations, but I have to say that they are long overdue, because we started talking about them in 2015 when we had the litter escape. I certainly encouraged the local authority and others to respond to the consultation, because it is so important that we strengthen the Environment Agency’s powers to protect our local communities and ensure that our environment is protected in the long term.