Leo McKinstry

How to waste £2.3 billion of public money

Spend it on bureaucracy in the regional development agencies

issue 01 December 2007

In these times of green awareness, waste management has become an increasingly fashionable issue for the public sector, always keen to find new excuses for bureaucratic intervention. The South East England Development Agency (Seeda), one of the many quangos created by Labour over the past decade, has certainly latched on to this cause in a big way. It has drawn up a ‘Waste Strategy’, set up a ‘Waste Market Development Group’, established a ‘Business Resource Efficiency and Waste Programme’, and convened ‘stakeholder workshops’ to promote ‘sustainable waste management’.

As if this frenzy were not enough, the agency also organised the grandly titled ‘Regional Waste Summit’ last year. Yet now we learn that Seeda has an even greater enthusiasm for another type of waste: the chronic, systematic waste of public money.

Documents acquired under the Freedom of Information Act by the terrier-like Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, Norman Baker — who deserves a knighthood for his ability to expose abuses in our public life — have revealed the epic scale of Seeda’s prodigality.

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