Support for fight against waste

Environmental bodies in the voluntary and community sector will receive good news on 1 April 2003 in an announcement from Angela Smith MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, which will promise an additional year of funding for projects previously receiving Landfill Tax Credits.

The Treasury announced in November 2002 that the funding would end, and environmental bodies have been lobbying since for interim funding to preserve the waste management projects that have been established during the life of the scheme.

The Landfill Tax Credit Scheme (LTCS) has existed to encourage and enable landfill operators to give money to certain organisations to carry out environmental projects. Through the scheme, they can donate up to 20% of their landfill tax liability to environmental bodies and claim a tax credit worth 90% of their contribution.

The future for projects funded by the initiative is unclear. Ms Smith has agreed to provide a transitional funding scheme for one further year from central funds. This means that existing projects will continue to receive funding during 2003/04, giving extra time to find alternative funding. She also said today that she valued “the contribution made by the voluntary sector in the fight against waste in Northern Ireland ".

The announcement will affect waste management projects that provide research, education and information about sustainable waste management and market development for recycled rubbish (category c-cc projects). It will impact widely on the voluntary sector, on a specific group of organisations including Groundwork , Bryson House , Arena Network and the Ulster Wildlife Trust .

These organisations have been lobbying government to continue funding to ensure that valuable environmental projects will not be lost.

George Dawson from Arena Network commented that organisations are unclear about what will happen when the year ends, but stressed that the good work of environmental bodies must be maintained. He said Arena Network looked forward to the continuation of a consultation process, which the government has pledged committed to.

Ms Smith is to stress the importance of sustainability in her announcement: “It is important …to set eligibility criteria to ensure that only sustainable waste management projects are considered for continued funding under this interim arrangement. It is also important that scarce resources are targeted at those projects which contribute most to our Waste Management Strategy and help reduce the amount of waste going to landfill .”