§ Mr. BurnsTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to publish a timetable for implementation of the Environmental Protection Act 1990; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. Portillo[pursuant to the reply, 28 November 1990, c. 404]: My right hon. Friend has today laid before the House the Litter Etc (Transitional Provisions) Regulations 1991.
These provide that, where an authority has assigned its street cleaning work to its own work force or DSO under part I of the Local Government Act 1988, and it needs to undertake additional work to comply with the duties imposed on it by the Environmental Protection Act, the authority will be able to assign that additional work to the DSO, provided that it is accounted for separately from the work originally assigned to the DSO. If the cost of the additional work carried out between 1 April and 30 September 1991 is more than 20 per cent. of the cost of the work originally assigned to the DSO over that period, the 49W authority will be required to expose its street cleaning services to further competition in accordance with the following timetable:
Date by which work first had to be exposed to competition Date by which work has to be retendered 1 August 1989 1 October 1992 1 January 1990 1 January 1992 1 August 1990 1 August 1993 Where an authority has assigned street cleaning services to an independent contractor it will be taken as complying with the duties imposed by the Environmental Protection Act if it can demonstrate that it has used its best endeavours to negotiate any necessary variations in the contract with the contractor concerned, but he is either not prepared to agree such variations or is prepared to do so only on unreasonable terms.
The regulations also contain provisions relating to the transfer of highway cleaning responsibilities from county to district councils under the Environmental Protection Act. They allow district councils to assign such work to their DSO, provided that they account for it separately and that they first use their best endeavours to enter into an agreement with any contractor who previously carried out this work under contract with the county council. They also facilitate the making of works contracts between district councils to which this responsibility has been transferred and the authorities who were carrying it out before 1 April 1991.
The regulations apply also to Scotland and Wales except that regulations 5 and 6 dealing with the transfer of highway cleaning responsibilities from county to district councils are not applicable in Scotland.