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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason 31 councils were granted Transitional Provisions under The Environment Act 2021 (Commencement No. 9 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2024.

We have set out that every local authority will be required to collect food waste for recycling by 31 March 2026. In some exceptional circumstances, certain local authorities may need longer to implement separate food waste collections for households due to long-term waste disposal contracts that run beyond 31 March 2026.

We engaged extensively with affected local authorities and required that they provide evidence that their waste disposal contract presents an unavoidable barrier to the introduction of food waste collections by 31 March 2026.

We will continue to work with local authorities to identify whether they can bring forward food waste collections and the associated benefits before the end of their transitional arrangement.