There is to be a step change in the way Government departments re-use or recycle their rubbish. In future obsolete office machinery and equipment, paper and cardboard, toner cartridges, copiers and printers, plastics and tin cans will all be disposed off – and bought in the first place – in a more sustainable fashion.Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett announced a series of targets that the departments will have to meet. She said England currently produced 375 million tonnes of waste each year with the figure for the United Kingdom as a whole being 420 million tonnes – enough rubbish to fill the Albert Hall in London every hour.

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Scottish local council representatives hope to meet the country’s Finance Minister early next week to discuss arrangements for a review of the efficiency of the public sector in Scotland. COSLA – the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities – has welcomed the review in principle but says it is confident that after the meeting it will be able to welcome the idea fully.Following a statement from the minister, Andy Kerr, COSLA said that it understood the general thrust of the Scottish Executive’s thinking on the subject and that it shared the commitment to get as many resources as possible into frontline services for the benefit of communities. COSLA president Pat Watters said Scottish Local Government was fully confident in any review looking at public sector efficiency. “Efficiency and Best Value are our bread and butter, it is what we have done for the last ten years, we do it on a daily basis and it is what we do best,” he added.

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Many processes are repeated across groups of similar organizations throughout the public sector, but the one size fits all IT solution has repeatedly failed. Providing seed corn funding from the centre, first for the local and then for the national product, is proving much more successful. This example of collaboration between the Department of Work and Pensions and Bradford Council to speed housing benefit payments makes the point.