About the SE Wales Regional Waste Management Plan

sewaleswasteplan.gov.uk
Planning for Waste in South East Wales

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About the plan

Summary of Consultation
Throughout the process of preparing the first Regional Waste Plan (RWP) an aim was to make the process as inclusive as possible. Extensive consultation was undertaken to find out the views of individuals, communities, public bodies and organisations, business and industry, voluntary organisations, environmental groups, other interest groups, and the waste management industry.

From the outset the Regional Waste Technical Group (RWTG) consisted of those who could contribute information to the Regional Waste Assessment, including officers from local government, the Welsh Assembly Government, Environment Agency Wales and other government bodies, and representatives from the waste industry. When the information gathering part of the process was nearing a conclusion the RWTG was widened further to include environmental groups, business and industry, and other government bodies. The intention in doing this was to involve as wide a range of 'stakeholder' viewpoints as possible throughout the process of preparing the Draft for Consultation of the RWP.

The next stage was to broaden the consultation not only to representatives of groups and organisations but to as many interested individuals and bodies as possible. This was to allow local considerations to be taken into account and to allow consideration of viewpoints not put forward previously.

The consultation took place over an 8-week period from Monday 4 August 2003 to Friday 26 September 2003 with a media launch and extensive media campaign organised jointly for the South East and South West regions. The consultation took the form of:

• A statistically structured survey of households and 'stakeholder' interests

• A broader consultation aimed at the whole population and at stakeholder interests

The Structured Survey
Consultants ‘Research and Marketing Ltd.’ were engaged to carry out the statistically structured survey at the regional level. The consultation had 4 principal elements:

• A postal survey of 6,000 households distributed proportionally at random across the region to provide a quantitative analysis of the preferences of the general public;

• An in-depth investigation with 5 focus groups of householders in different types of location with different socio-economic and age groups to help understand why people made the selections they did;

• A postal survey with targeted regional stakeholders to provide a quantitative analysis of the preferences of stakeholders;

• An in-depth investigation with a focus group and interviews with stakeholders to help understand their preferences and motivations.

The findings of Research and Marketing Ltd. are contained in their report; the Consultation Report

The Broader Consultation
Local authorities carried out consultation that they considered appropriate to their own area. To assist in this, and to achieve consistency across the region, a simplified questionnaire and suitable publicity material was designed and printed. Altogether 5,000 copies of the simplified questionnaires were distributed to authorities and, in addition, the questionnaire and information leaflets used in the structured survey were made available by individual councils. Both questionnaires were also available on this web site.

Questionnaires were made available in libraries and other public offices and authorities sought views in a number of different ways including:

• Publicity and questionnaires on the councils' own web sites

• Publicity and printed questionnaires to all householders in council newspapers

• Special sessions at community forums, debate in council committees and working groups

In addition, a regional 'Industry Seminar' was held with invitations to over 300 businesses and industries with an interest in waste management to find out views and preferences.

The questionnaire responses were analysed by Research and Marketing Ltd. and used to reinforce the results from the structured survey - these results are reported in the Consultation Report. A number of responses were made in writing - these responses have been analysed in the Consultation Report 2

Findings
A summary of the findings of both the consultation reports can be found in 'Chapter 8 Dealing with Waste: Your Views' of the Regional Waste Plan (2.4Mb)

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