Dumping rubbish in landfill 'costs £30 per home' - LGA

Dumping rubbish in landfill sites will cost the average home in England £30 this year, local authorities have warned.

The Local Government Association (LGA) said it wanted taxes imposed on councils for using landfill to be "ring fenced" to invest in schemes to help councils increase their recycling rates.

The landfill tax aims to encourage councils to send less rubbish to landfill and to recycle more.

Local authorities are taxed per tonne of landfill, with the tax set to increase to £40 a tonne from next month, leaving councils with a multi-million pound bill, according to the LGA.

Paul Bettison, chairman of the LGA environment board, said: "The logic (of the landfill tax) works fine but if you cannot afford to install the necessary systems for recycling, then you are stuck just paying the landfill tax.

"This money just goes into the general exchequer and the Government are loathe to give it back to councils."

The call from the LGA comes after it was disclosed this week that householders in England had recycled more than £1 billion worth of rubbish in the past five years.

The value of the materials such as glass and paper that have been sent for recycling is £1.1 billion since 2003, the Recycle Now campaign said.

According to the campaign, 33.8 million tonnes of rubbish has been sent for recycling since 2003 - an amount that would have cost £1.8 billion to send to landfill, and would fill the Royal Albert Hall more than 1,000 times.

The Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap), which runs the Recycle Now campaign, said the recycling industry supported 100,000 jobs, produced an annual turnover of £17 billion and contributed £5.5 billion to the UK economy.

The LGA has already warned that if landfill was not reduced, councils and council taxpayers could soon face EU fines of £150 for every tonne of rubbish above a set amount which ended up in the ground.

Mark Wallace, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, commenting on the £30 forecast increase in council tax bills, said: "It is deeply unfair that whilst the Government have had to back down on a bin tax, ordinary people are still having to pay a hefty price for this core service.

"The fact is that people cannot afford to pay any more council tax given the current economic climate."

Shadow communities and local government secretary Caroline Spelman said: "When landfill tax was first introduced, National Insurance was cut in return so that it was a clear and genuine tax shift to help councils go green, but that is no longer the case.

"Gordon Brown has taken what was originally a green incentive and used it to simply tax people more and more, forcing councils to raise council tax or reduce services.

"Labour's cuts to weekly rubbish collections are a direct consequence of Gordon Brown's tax regime."

Friends of the Earth waste campaigner Michael Warhurst said: "More cash needs to be put into recycling schemes, which create jobs and cut climate-changing emissions.

"The Government should move beyond taxing landfill and tax incineration as well - burning rubbish wastes valuable resources and pumps out climate pollution."

Liberal Democrat communities and local government spokeswoman Julia Goldsworthy said: "The Government has betrayed councils by reneging on their commitment to let them reinvest landfill tax in recycling schemes. Ministers are forcing local taxpayers to pick up the bill.

"With council budgets already overstretched, it is getting harder and harder for councils to make the investment needed to reduce waste going to landfill."