The National Association of Waste Disposal Officers (NAWDO) has called on the government to expand options for maintaining waste disposal services as 134 councils are reorganised into 38 unitary authorities across 14 areas of England.

In a statement, the association warns that existing county-wide disposal arrangements - contracts with operators, access to energy-from-waste plants and transfer stations, specialist procurement capacity - would by default be broken up among the new unitaries rather than preserved as shared services. NAWDO, whose members handle around 75 per cent of municipally managed waste in England, said officers are “working hard to avoid new unitary authorities facing ‘day one’ without viable disposal routes.”

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) confirmed last week (16 July) reorganisation decisions for the 14 areas, following assessment of 52 proposals from councils invited to submit plans last year. Shadow elections for new authorities will be scheduled for May 2027, with vesting day on 1 April 2028. The decisions follow earlier reorganisation announcements for five other areas including Surrey and Essex; decisions for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and for West Sussex have been deferred.

Several of the 14 areas will form four unitaries each - Kent and Medway, Hertfordshire, Lancashire, Devon and Lincolnshire among them. Where a single county council currently holds one disposal contract serving its whole geography, that arrangement would need to be divided among multiple successor councils or replaced entirely, risking “fragmenting long-standing systems and efficiencies at scale,” NAWDO said.

NAWDO is proposing a hosted shared service model as an immediate route to continuity on day one. Longer term, the association is pressing for the power to create Joint Waste Authorities to be reinstated. The Deregulation Act 2015 repealed the provision, originally created by the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, before any joint authorities were established. NAWDO also wants an acceleration of devolution and the option for unitary authorities to delegate waste functions to strategic authorities, preserving the scale needed for investment in low-carbon waste infrastructure.

The association acknowledged that unitary models have “the potential to successfully align responsibility for both collection and treatment,” and said reorganisation “could become a catalyst for more efficient, lower-carbon waste systems” if the right structures are in place.

The transition coincides with the first year of Simpler Recycling for households, which came into force on 31 March 2026. FCC Environment’s annual political analysis, published in April, noted that reorganisation could create opportunities for “larger, more integrated contracts” but flagged transitional risks including contract renegotiation and procurement pauses.

MHCLG said it had committed £63 million in capacity funding, including more than £900,000 per new unitary in transition support - “the first time reorganisation has been supported in this way.”