Agenda item

Paul King (Cabinet Member for Environment, Coastal Regeneration and Special Projects) and Helen Shulver (Assistant Director Resource Management and Circular Economy) were in attendance for the item.

1. The Cabinet Member for Environment, Mr Paul King, explained that the existing strategy was out of date and needed replacement. He emphasised that KCC as waste disposal authority had borne significant costs (2024-25 £53 million) to dispose of residual waste collected by district and borough councils and that by reducing residual waste (-10%) and increasing recycling could deliver substantial savings. (est over £ 6 million)

2. Helen Shulver, Strategic Lead for the Kent Resource Partnership, outlined the partnership’s role and the four strategic aims of the strategy, including:

a)    The desire to reduce waste and increase recycling by delivering efficient, effective and aligned collections.

b)    Engaging with and informing residents to support behavioural changes and look to manage littering and fly?tipping in a coordinated way.

c)      Highlighted the examples of the joint Feed Your Foodie food waste behaviour change project, which had increased food waste capture in participating areas by over 20% and had repaid its investment within a year through cost avoidance and had continued delivering ongoing savings.

3. Members discussed:

a)    The prevention of contamination of recycling at source and the balance between positive engagement and enforcement. It was suggested that behaviour change approaches focused primarily on positive reinforcement, with enforcement seeing targeted used only where necessary.

b)    The need of consistent communications across Kent. Officers responded by discussing current branding and campaigns such as Shake It Out. In addition, KRP commissions research was discussed and how shares best practice was shared with other partnerships and bodies such as Waste and Resource Action programme (WRAP) and ReLondon, who had developed and assisted in targeted campaigns.

c)      Members raised concerns on continued ongoing fly?tipping issues. These had included large?scale incidents involving organised crime and Members discussed the current preventative roles of partner agencies such as the Environment Agency, Kent Police and local authorities were to play. Officers discussed the concerns raised and responded that an intelligence analyst funded by KRP would support coordinated action against fly?tipping.

d)    Asked if there were any current engagement and involvement with schools and young people in education about waste and recycling. The work that current contractors and school waste providers had undertook encompassed educational work with schools and were identified as the level of current joint engagement.

e)    Questioned the differences in collection systems and performance between districts and the impact of new national “simpler recycling” requirements.

f)        New national requirements for the collection of additional materials and food waste were addressed by officers. The new requirements had created opportunities for step changes in performance and proposals for future financial arrangements with districts to incentivise higher capture of recyclables would be brought to the Committee in due course.

RESOLVED to endorse the proposed decision, namely:

The Cabinet Member for Coastal Regeneration, Environment & Special Projects agrees to:

(a)    Adopt the Kent Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy 2026 – 2031 as KCC’s formal commitment to the partnership approach, subject to formal endorsement by all other partner authorities through their governance processes

(b)    Delegate authority to the Corporate Director for Growth, Environment and Transport or other officer as required by the Corporate Director to review the Strategy on an annual basis and revise the strategy where changes do not require additional governance.

(c)    Delegateauthority to the Corporate Director Growth, Environment and Transport, in consultation with the Cabinet Member Coastal Regeneration, Environment and Special Projects, to take the actions required to support the Kent Resource Partnership with the implementation of the strategy, subject to the Councils decision-making process.