NEWS FROM THE REGIONS

EASTERN REGION

Peterborough City Council have purchased a modern factory as a base for recycling operations. The 62,000 sq ft building on a site of 7.42 acres is large enough to accommodate a new materials recycling facility (MRF) and could become home to the city's award-winning electrical appliance recycling programme.
 
The electrical appliance recycling programme also needs larger premises following its massive success in recycling a wide range of electrical products either by repairing them for re-sale to needy families or by dismantling them and recycling the components.
 
 
South Norfolk District Council has scrapped a five-year bin-chipping trial following problems with the weighing equipment. Council leaders said they ordered the ‘switch off’ after the trial identified “serious shortcomings, including inconsistent and unreliable weighing data, computer problems, electrical and equipment failures and unacceptable delays to the daily bin rounds”. Councillor David Bills, cabinet member for environment, health, recycling and safety, said: “The whole concept of pay-as-you-throw is fraught with problems. It is yet again the government threatening people with a new tax rather than encouraging recycling. People may start putting rubbish into neighbours’ bins, burning rubbish or even fly-tipping. It just does not make sense.”

Contact: Heidi Seary heidi@crn.org.uk, 07966450426, Resource Saver - Louise Bloom louise@crn.org.uk. 01223 411494

NORTH WEST

It is a relatively quiet period in the North West. Many organisations are awaiting the signing of large PFI waste contracts, before being able to see where potential partnerships can occur. In Greater Manchester and Cumbria in particular, co-ordinated attempts have been made to engage with prospective waste contractors, particularly over joint activity on Household Waste Recycling Centres, but any advance is held up in the contract signing delay. Hopefully things will have progressed by September.

In the meantime Re-use organisations in the region are looking closely at the potential to jointly deliver bulky waste contracts for districts. Bulky waste is one of the major areas of collection authority services that still needs addressing, but there are others, and the network co-ordinator is meeting with all these authorities in Manchester and Cumbria, to explore where there are gaps in service provision and how working with their local sector organisations – and potential partnerships can deliver substantial benefits.

Finally, REconomy – www.reconomy.org.uk. If you have an idea about how your organisation needs to develop and the support required for this, have a look at the site, and put in an expression of interest form. In the first instance do have a chat with your regional co-ordinator.

Contact: Ian Scott ian@crn.org.uk 0161 273 6976

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SOUTH WEST

The national regional programme funded by Defra came to an end this year and there has been a great deal of work on finding continuation funding for the work that has been going on in the South West over the past two and a half years. At this stage it is necessary to cut back on the services organisations receive whilst this search continues. The CRN UK will be providing a peer exchange email address to allow SW CWN members to share information directly with other groups within the region.

The Community Waste Network South West steering group will continue to meet and feed back important information to this peer network.

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YORKSHIRE AND HUMBER

A new Resource Park is in the offing in Yorkshire and wants to attract expanding or new social enterprises to take up some of the purpose-built accommodation.  Since the South Kirkby Recycling Business Park gained its own outline planning last summer, interest from potential tenants has been buoyant, with 110,000 sq ft of custom built floorspace already under offer. Urban Mines is looking for new tenants for the development. If you are wish to know more, please contact Peter Scholes at Urban Mines on 01274 699400 or at peter.scholes@urbanmines.org.uk. More on the new development at
www.urbanmines.org.uk/?i=1616&s=1111

Social enterprises in Yorkshire & the Humber are also benefitting from a range of new services to help in their development. Alongside the national REconomy programme, the Region has a new team of nine Business Link advisors with the main focus on pre-start and start-up social enterprise support (businesses under 3 years old). The advisors have responsibility for different areas and will be linking to specialist agencies. A key specialist - Recycling Action Yorkshire (RAY) - is expanding its remit to include more support for reuse and waste minimisation work. Its relaunch as REY (Resource Efficiency Yorkshire) is imminent.

For more information & contact details on both projects contact Paul at the Regional Community Waste Network office

Contact: Paul Forrest paulf@crn.org.uk 07980 223341