Western Riverside Waste Authority

This information has been provided by the Western Riverside Waste Authority:

Western Riverside Waste Authority is the statutory waste disposal authority for the London Boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham, Lambeth and Wandsworth and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The Authority’s waste management policies focus on recycling. Remaining waste is transported from the Authority’s two transfer stations along the River Thames to an Energy from Waste facility at Belvedere, which became fully operational in 2011/12. Until that time, residual waste continues to be transported to landfill.

The Authority and its constituent councils agreed on a new basis of cost apportionment from 2009-10. Under the agreement, which is intended to run for eight years, the Authority recovers costs from its constituent councils. Charges are based on a cost per tonne, depending on the type of waste recycled or disposed of. There is a residual annual levy, apportioned on the basis of council tax-base, for overheads and civic amenity waste.

The table below shows the estimated costs for each constituent council for 2011/12, compared with the original budget for 2010/11.

Total net costs have increased by 10.8 per cent compared to the original budget for 2010/11. This is due to higher contract costs for sending waste to the Energy from Waste facility, capital financing costs for the Material Recovery Facility (MRF), and general inflation. These increases are partly offset by lower waste volumes, reduced landfill costs, inflation adjustments to charges and the levy, and a contribution from the General Reserve. The increase is not the same across all four boroughs. This is mainly because each borough has seen different changes in the amount of waste they planned for between the two financial years.

For more information visit the Western Riverside Waste Authority website.