Brighton & Hove City Council, as a Waste and Minerals Planning Authority, provides planning policies for waste management and minerals production.
The Council, working in partnership with East Sussex County Council and the South Downs National Park Authority, adopted the:
A review of the Waste and Minerals Plan is currently being undertaken by the Authorities, with a focus on the supply of minerals.
Waste
The main types of waste are:
Local Authority Collected Waste (LACW)
Household waste comprises approximately 95% of local authority collected waste, the remainder coming from sources such as street sweepings and public parks and gardens.
Commercial and Industrial Waste (C&I)
This is produced from shops, food outlets, businesses, and manufacturing activities and comprises about 27% of waste in the Plan Area as a whole.
Construction, Demolition and Excavation Waste (CDEW)
Produced from building activity, with a considerable proportion of it is considered to be inert. CDEW comprises an estimated 51% of all waste arisings.
Other wastes
This includes hazardous waste, liquid waste (other than wastewater), and wastes arising from the agricultural sector.
The city council monitors the quantity of local authority collected waste (LACW) but it does not directly monitor the quantity of commercial and industrial waste or construction, demolition and excavation waste arisings.
The best estimate for C&I waste arisings for East Sussex and Brighton & Hove in 2020 was 506,846 tonnes, estimates for annual arisings of CDEW can be found in the East Sussex Waste and Minerals AMR.
Key figures for Local Authority Collected Waste in Brighton and Hove are:
- 110,025 tonnes of household LACW were produced in Brighton & Hove in 2020/21, an increase on the 108,894 tonnes in the previous monitoring year
- The majority of waste (71.0%) in 2020/21 was sent for energy recovery, an increase on the previous three monitoring years and the highest figure since the Newhaven Energy Recovery Facility was operational
- the amount of landfilled waste continues to reduce and represented only 1.6 percent of all LACW which is in contrast to 59 percent sent to landfill in 2007/08
- 27.5 percent was recycled, composted or reused, a similar proportion to recent monitoring years
Minerals
Brighton & Hove does not have any active mineral sites and the level of production in East Sussex is very low by regional standards. Actual production figures are bound by confidentiality constraints, caused by particular commercial sensitivities due to the small number of operators in place.
National policy is to increase the use of secondary and recycled aggregates as an alternative to reducing reserves of primary aggregates and this is reflected in Waste and Minerals Plan Policy WMP3.
Details on aggregate capacity in the plan area and detailed figures for East Sussex and Brighton & Hove are published in supporting documents for Waste and Minerals Local Plan Review and in the East Sussex Waste and Minerals AMR.
It is a requirement of the NPPF to produce an annual Local Aggregate Assessment (LAA) to assess the demand for and supply of aggregates in their area. The latest LAA was created jointly with East Sussex County Council and the South Downs National Park Authority and published in December 2020.