HC Deb 14 March 2002 vol 381 cc1234-5W
Mr. Love

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how much, and what proportion, of municipal waste has been(a) landfilled, (b) incinerated, (c) composted and (d) re-cycled in the United Kingdom in each year since 1990; and if she will make a statement. [42562]

Mr. Meacher

Data on municipal waste are available from the Department's Municipal Waste Management Survey 1999–2000. The results for England and Wales are as follows:

findings are that Cubit was highly effective at removing vehicles from the streets but that since Cubit ceased operations abandoned and untaxed vehicles have been returning to the areas originally targeted.

Since the original pilot in Medway, further operations have taken place and are shown in the table.

Operation Cubit Date
Swanley June 2001
Dartford October 2001
Gravesend October 2001
Maidstone January 2002
Swale January 2002
Hastings February 2002
Brighton February 2002
Liverpool March 2002

To date the operations have removed almost 3,000 abandoned unlicensed vehicles from the streets of Kent and Hastings. We will be making an announcement very shortly about the extension of Operation Cubit to other local authorities.

Mrs. May

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what measures or statistics are collated to quantify the number of abandoned cars dumped by local authority area. [42242]

Mr. Meacher

Information on the number of abandoned vehicles removed by local authorities was collected for the first time in the Department's 2000–01 Municipal Waste Management Survey which should be published in July 2002.

The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) now ask local authorities in England and Wales to include in their waste collection statistics figures on the number of abandoned and surrendered vehicles. The first figures requested cover the period 1 April 1999 to 31 march 2000. This information is published in the CIPFA waste collection and disposal statistics and summary tables are available at www.ipf.co.uk/sis. CIPFA will be requesting this information in future years.

Although the Refuse Disposal (Amenity) Act 1978 does not require local authorities to keep records of the numbers of abandoned vehicles that they deal with, we would expect them to do so because the numbers involved are on the increase and this has implications for their budgets.