Lib Dems on NLWA reinstate nappy subsidy

Liberal Democrat and Labour members of the North London Waste Authority have reinstated a subsidy for reusable or “real” nappies that was controversially scrapped by the Conservatives last September.

The Tories had previously provoked outrage by ramming through a series of provocative measures at the authority’s September meeting when several Labour members were absent and most Liberal Democrat councillors were at their party’s annual conference in Brighton.

The NLWA – the waste disposal authority for the seven north London boroughs – is made up of five Tories, five Labour members and four Lib Dems. The Tory Chair – Cllr Brian Coleman of Barnet – owes his position to the support of the Lib Dem group. That support has now been withdrawn and the Labour and Lib Dem groups have begun working together.

Cllr Coleman is known to be stepping down from the NLWA in May. His actions lost him support and wasted a lot of authority time. He’s clearly standing down because he knows that he’ll never be supported as Chair by the Lib Dem group again. We now are entering the most important phase of the NLWA’s history – we have to procure millions of pounds worth of new recycling and waste processing facilities. There is no room for political games.

As well as scrapping the nappy subsidy Cllr Coleman had proposed the payment of recycling credits to companies like Tesco, a measure that Lib Dems and Labour had rejected earlier in the year. He had also tried to close the North London Recycling Forum – a body where councillors, officers and businesses meet to discuss how to improve recycling techniques – by withdrawing its NLWA grant. That grant has now been reinstated by the Lib Dem and Labour groups.

The next NLWA meeting, in April, will discuss who should be eligible for recycling credits which the authority pays for recycling that it would not have done. Labour want the credits only to go to non-profit making groups. The Lib Dems want to include profit-making companies where recycling is their primary trading purpose. The Tories want credits to be paid to any private company that recycles.

Tesco probably produce more waste than any other company in Britain. The government should be forcing them to minimise their waste footprint and to recycle. It should not be up to public authorities like the NLWA to pay Tesco to recycle.

Government needs Climate Change Minister

A cross-party parliamentary committee has recommended that the government appoint a climate change minister to ensure that green policies are properly coordinated across Whitehall. That's good. I think we need the same thing at Camden Council. An Executive portfolio that looks specifically at climate change.

The Treasury Select Committee also expressed concern that the government's policy mix is insufficient to meet its internationally agreed climate change targets, which it is, and called for a greater use of green taxes to effect behavioural change, and criticised airlines for dragging their feet on reducing carbon emissions.

Cllr Blackwell wrong on energy meters

Cllr Theo Blackwell (Lab, Regent's Park) recently wrote in the CNJ that “energy metering would be a retrograde step in council blocks.” Wrong again, Theo. If council tenants and leaseholders are to play their part in the battle against climate change, as many of them would like to, then they must be given the incentives and the controls to do so. Currently, if a flat is too hot in winter the only way to cool it down is to open the window and release the heat out into the atmosphere. That’s crazy. All flats must have heating controls and meters.

The Camden Sustainability Task Force made this point very clearly in our first report on Energy and Energy Efficiency. We want to see housing estates turned into energy hubs supplying themselves and the surrounding neighbourhood with electricity and heat using extremely efficient Combined Heat and Power (CHP) district heating systems. The Executive agreed and estates where the boilers need replacing should now get CHP in due course.

But this makes absolutely no sense unless we give tenants and leaseholders the ability to control how much energy they use. The unit cost should end up being less than the private utilities would charge because Camden buys gas in bulk and because we will look at whether other fuels like waste wood or biogas from food waste could be used. The total cost to a household will depend on how much energy they use but with controls and meters they will clearly have an incentive to minimise energy wastage and therefore carbon emissions. And anyone in living in serious fuel poverty will continue to receive assistance as they do now.