§ Mr. BendallTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he intends to make available to the public information concerning the nature of industrial waste being dumped in any given local authority area.
§ Mr. BaldryWaste disposal plans drawn up and published by waste disposal authorities should give a picture of the industrial waste arising and where it goes for disposal within each authority's area.
The deposit of industrial waste is illegal unless authorised by a licence from the waste disposal authority under part I of the Control of Pollution Act 1974. Waste disposal authorities must keep registers of all such licences open to the public. Each licence shows the types of waste permitted at each site. Under section 64 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the information to be kept on public registers will be greatly expanded. The extent of this information will be prescribed in regulations on which my Department will be consulting publicly before the implementation of section 64.
Individual records are kept of the transport and disposal of the most difficult and harmful wastes, designated as special waste under the Control of Pollution Act 1974. These records are copied to waste disposal authorities. In a consultation paper ("Control of Pollution Act 1974, the Special Waste Regulations 1980, a Consultation Paper, Special Waste and the Control of its Disposal") issued by my Department and the Welsh Office last year, the Government proposed that registers of special waste records should be open for public inspection.