Local Authority Waste Disposal Company

In the mid 1990s, Waste Disposal Authorities were required by law to divest their assets and their regulatory responsibilities with regard to the Disposal and Treatment of waste which were functions previously operated in-house, notably Landfill sites, Composting sites and Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs). The regulatory responsibilities were transferred to the Environment Agency as part of its creation, and the assets were either sold to privately owned waste management companies, or transferred to a new Local Authority Waste Disposal Company or LAWDC.

The creation of a LAWDC required the Waste Disposal Authority to be at arms-length, with the shares able to be owned wholly by the Authority but with less than 20% representation at the LAWDC's board level. The transfer of the assets (i.e. sites) to the LAWDC also entailed the transfer of staff and in most cases some form of Disposal and/or Treatment contract.

As time passed, many of the LAWDCs were sold to privately owned waste management companies, especially through the late 1990s. There are now only a limited number of LAWDCs that remain, although the underpinning legislation requiring their creation has been repealed. The remaining LAWDCs are:

• Amgen Rhondda Limited (Amgen Cymru)
• Cumbria Waste Management Limited (CWM)
• CWM Environmental Limited
• Norfolk Environmental Services Limited (NEWS) now part of Norse Environmental Waste Services
• Silent Valley Waste Services
• Yorwaste

The new arrangements for a Waste Disposal Authority and/or Waste Collection Authority that is seeking to create an arms-length company for the delivery of waste services (primarily for waste collection services but increasingly for the delivery of HWRC contracts for example) are through a Local Authority Trading Company.