Northern Ireland is to create a Resource Efficiency Directorate (RED) and streamline legislation to crack down on waste crime, the Environment Minister Mark H Durkan announced today (8 April).

Speaking in the Assembly today, Durkan outlined a range of actions to crack down on waste crime, including:

• a full Operational Strategy with a detailed action plan;
• the creation of a new Resource Efficiency Directorate staffed by officers with 'appropriate skills' within the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA); and
• a review of the current legislative framework for waste management.

Although details of these actions are yet to be announced, all of these actions are to be completed 'by the end of June'.

A Departmental spokesperson said: “The new Resource Efficiency Directorate, reporting to the NIEA Chief Executive, is intended to unite the various waste regulatory and enforcement teams in the NIEA. The creation of this directorate constitutes an immediate and initial reaction to the Mills Report recommendation for more cohesive strategy and direction on waste management. The target date for the establishment of the Directorate is the end of May 2014.”

'Managing waste properly'

The move seeks to fulfil Durkan’s December 2013 pledge to ‘fundamentally change’ how waste is managed in the country, following a ‘sobering’ report into illegal dumping.

The report by Chris Mills, the former Director of the Welsh Environment Agency, ‘A review of waste disposal at the Mobuoy site and the lessons learnt for the future regulation of the waste industry in Northern Ireland’, outlined the case of an illegal site in Campsie, where 516,000 tonnes of waste was discovered by the NIEA in an area adjacent to the River Faughan in Mobuoy near Derry.

The key finding from the report however, was that the regulation of waste in Northern Ireland is ‘highly vulnerable to criminal infiltration’.

As such, Mills recommended that the government become ‘more rigorous and robust in regulatory activity to stop criminals entering the waste industry’.

It is thought that the new RED body will help deliver this more stringent approach to waste compliance.

Durkan said: “We need to use the resources at our disposal much more efficiently in tackling waste crime. The waste sector in Northern Ireland is highly vulnerable to criminal infiltration and some of this activity is linked to organised crime. That’s why it’s important that I reshape DOE to create a new directorate that will be joined up.

“I also have a detailed action plan in place. Key actions will include:

• a regime of targeted inspections to ensure all waste operators comply with the law;
• a new partnership with local government so that local councils and NIEA share information, resources and strategies to manage waste properly; and
• innovation partnerships with Northern Ireland businesses to help them stop creating waste and cut costs.”

Streamlining legislation

To further help manage the waste industry, Durkan also announced that he is developing a Better Regulation Bill to ‘transform the overall approach to environmental regulation in Northern Ireland’.

He said: “The Better Regulation Bill, will help us because it will transform our environmental regulatory systems by creating the capacity for the department to issue one streamlined integrated permit to a business. It will also give NIEA uniform inspection powers meaning that an individual officer will be authorised to inspect against all environmental regulations rather than only a limited number as at present. This will mean the same number of NIEA officers will be able to carry out a significantly increased overall number of inspections and in a much more targeted way.

“Tough and effective waste crime enforcement is critical. We must be vigilant and fearless in chasing people who deliberately set out to make money by damaging our environment, our communities and our legitimate businesses through illegal waste dumping, fuel laundering and other forms of waste crime. It is unacceptable and must be eliminated.”

He concluded: “The actions that I have announced today will set in motion a transformation in resource efficiency and waste management in Northern Ireland.”

Read the Mills report or find out more about Durkan’s pledge to curb waste crime.