Whitehall has yet to complete a new burdens assessment for introducing separate food waste collections with six months until the policy has to be implemented, The MJ has learnt.
Lead chief executive on the District Councils' Network's finance and investment workstream, Ian Miller, said: ‘It's astonishing that 16 months after the legislation that fixed the implementation date for domestic food waste collections and with only three months to go before publication of the provisional settlement for 2026-27, DEFRA has still not completed its assessment of the funding for this major new burden. One wonders what the department has been doing in the three months since the Spending Review. The tardiness and lack of information will reinforce councils' concerns about whether this new burden will be properly funded.'
