Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether any (a) grant scheme, (b) core departmental and (c) other funding for local authorities is linked to their recycling rates of household waste.

From 1 January 2025, the Producer Responsibility (Packaging and Packaging Waste) Regulations 2024, alongside simpler recycling and the deposit return scheme, will deliver transformational change, creating thousands of new jobs, helping communities to clean up their local areas, and stimulating billions of pounds’ worth of investment.

This will require obligated producers to pay the full end of life costs including managing the efficient and effective collection and disposal costs of waste associated with the packaging that they place on the market. That will bring more than £1 billion of investment into local Government waste collections.

The majority of the funding provided from central Government to councils through the Local Government Finance Settlement is un-ringfenced, including funding for waste management. For 2025-26, funding that local authorities receive from the Extended producer responsibility scheme will be additional income that is separate to income received through the local government finance settlement.

The Government will assess the impact of additional pEPR income on the relative needs and resources of individual local authorities, and how we factor it into our measurement of local authority spending power, ahead of the 2026-27 Settlement. We will consult local councils on any expected changes.