The topic of performance management and the public sector has been getting
increasing coverage within both the general and specialist public sector press. Initially,
considerable guidance and promotion was issued on best value by government, and
various supporting agencies. In terms of framing this research programme, a
substantial literature review was undertaken which evaluated Government’s Local
Government Modernisation Agenda (LGMA) and included initiatives such as the
National Procurement Strategy, best value and the Comprehensive Performance
Assessment (CPA) regime. The review also addressed performance management
frameworks (such as the Balanced Scorecard) and tools (like IiP), before moving on to
consider how waste management in the UK is currently changing in response to a
number of EC Directives, the most prominent and ground-breaking of which is the EC
Landfill Directive which is requiring serious changes to relation to the scope and type
of waste services which they provide in order to avoid infraction procedures and the
imposition of fines. This emphasis had been furthered in UK law with the creation of
the Landfill Allowances Trading scheme (LATs), which effectively determined what
tonnages; every council could send to landfill between 2006-2020 (and introduced the
prospect of inter-trade between councils).