Regionalisation and the New Politics of Waste

• Start date: 01 December 2001
• End date: 31 October 2004

The research will examine how new policy agendas, institutional arrangements and political pressures are influencing strategic planning the management of municipal solid waste across England. Focusing on the evolution of regional institution building, and particularly the role of the new Regional Technical Advisory Bodies, the study will trace the level of involvement and the role of various actors and regulatory frameworks from different spatial scales in the development and implementation of sub-national waste management strategies. Emphasis will be placed on the variety of coalitions developing around strategic waste planning and their role in enabling or constraining different waste policy options. Placing these issues in the context of the challenges of sustainable development, the project seeks to inform the wider debate on institutional change and the prospect for new ways of thinking about sustainable resource management through England’s emerging regional structures. The research will follow a number of key stages: 1. semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis to provide an initial comprehensive assessment of the regional structures and emerging policy processes in all of the English regions; 2. interviews with key actors and organisations at the national level; 3. detailed case-study analysis on interactions between regional and local decision-making in three regions selected on the basis of the above findings