***** - ***** is a dedicated business support programme working to reduce CO2 emissions and accelerate low carbon economic growth in Yorkshire and Humber.

***** improves the economy and environment in four ways:

• Bringing business together around opportunities such as Carbon Capture and Storage, helping build supply chains and attracting investment.
• Specialist, technical support to help low carbon sector businesses start up and grow faster.
• High impact support to help all businesses to cut costs and carbon now, while building the market for the low carbon businesses above.
• Making commercial investments into projects such as renewable energy to create growth and sustain a “revolving” Low Carbon Investment Fund.

July 2009 to present - Resource Efficiency Programme Manager, ***** Yorkshire Ltd

Oct 2006 to July 2009 - Principal Consultant, Resource Futures Ltd (Leeds / Bristol)

2005 to 2006 - Senior Consultant, Resource Futures Ltd (Leeds / Bristol)

2004 to 2005 - Senior Consultant, SLR Consulting Ltd (Edinburgh)

2001 to 2004 - Environmental Consultant, SWAP Ltd (Leeds)

2001 to 2004 - External Assessor, CRED and SEED Programmes (periodic)

1998 to 2001 - Project Manager, SWAP Ltd (Leeds)

1997 to 1998 - Research Assistant, SWAP Ltd (Leeds)

1993 to 1994 - General practice surveyor, Bigwoods Chartered Surveyors (Birmingham)

***** - MRes Master of Research in the Built Environment, University of Leeds (Distinction awarded for thesis)

***** - BSc (Hons) Estate Management, University of Central England (Class 2:1)

Chartered Member of the Institute of Wastes Management (CIWM)

Current role:
Ashley is the Resource Efficiency Programme Manager within ***** Yorkshire (www.*****.org.uk).
• He oversees a team of fifteen whose key objective is to stimulate the region’s move to a low carbon economy through stimulating product development / commercialisation, investment support to SMEs and technical due diligence on prospective development areas. He offers technical and management guidance across a spectrum of resource efficiency areas.
• He oversee the delivery of a £5.3m resource efficiency budget in a number of different programme areas that ensures that the team meets the challenging targets that have been set against: CO2 savings, businesses assisted, job creation, private sector investment and Gross Value Added (GVA).
• He is responsible for the successful delivery of the Low Carbon Investment Fund which essentially allows businesses and stakeholders from the environmental, waste management, recycling and associated sectors to submit business growth plans and project proposals for potential support and investment funding. The aim of this fund is to increase the competitiveness, capacity, quality or scale of companies in the resource efficiency sector in Yorkshire & Humber to find new business and grow.

Ashley joined ***** in June 2009 from environmental consultancy, Resource Futures, where he led the research and consultancy team within the company.

Previous experience:
Prior to joining ***** Yorkshire Ashley was the Principal Consultant for Resource Future’s Research and Technical Consultancy (RTC) team. Much of this work centred on research, project management and waste strategy-related work. His role involved developing and managing a suite of services aimed at the private, public and community sectors. Much of his work entailed attitudinal surveys, waste management strategies, options appraisals, waste forecasting and submitting contract proposals. He managed a team of 7 (senior) consultants split equally between Leeds and Bristol. He guided the team to become one of the market leaders in: food waste collections; resource efficiency and SMEs; operative training and municipal recycling collections. He was responsible for raising at least £500k of consultancy revenue per year for the company.

Ashley has over 12 years experience in a wastes management consultancy capacity. He has a wealth of project management experience: understanding the project life cycle from tender proposal production, project negotiation and presentation, project planning, resource mobilisation, contract management, production of work specifications, project completion and client after-care. He also co-ordinated all the work loads (including business development) within RTC and was responsible for reporting back to the board on team performance. He attended monthly management meetings where he helped manage the strategic direction of the company along with other team managers and company directors.

Data modeling and analysis:
He has managed a number of mass flow modeling exercises which have primarily been delivered on behalf of local authorities. In 2005, he managed two consultancy projects on behalf of Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority (GMWDA) that provided background data on non-household waste streams in anticipation of the letting of the UK’s largest waste PFI contract and Alnwick District Council totaling over £100,000 that provided tools to predict the composition and quantity of municipal waste arisings over a medium to long term period. He produced a model to aid decision making (the ‘Waste Forecast Flow’ model) which profiled separate municipal waste streams according to a number of waste growth scenarios - the outputs of which determined the recycling, composting and recovery rate for any given year as well as the BMW content and calorific value of the residual waste stream. It also estimated the availability of materials remaining in the residual waste stream, based on default compositional data.
Prior to this, Ashley worked for SLR Consulting where he was responsible for projects involving waste growth and composition forecasting for the purpose of sizing and measuring the effectiveness of MBT-type processes. One particular project involved designing a waste auditing protocol to measure the effectiveness of an MBT technology in meeting the recovery targets set by a waste disposal authority. He managed a work package on a large scale feasibility study that looked at appropriate sites and treatment technologies for municipal waste from the Edinburgh and Lothians area over a 25 year period. This involved designed an excel mass flow model that predicted the volume of individual waste streams (e.g. Household residual, source separated dry recyclables, kerbside collected organics, CA residual etc) managed by each of the 5 constituent councils as well as estimating the operational and capital costs associated with the management of these waste streams. The model also estimated the recovery levels anticipated by employing an MBT type technology.

Regional waste strategy work:
He was involved in a project on behalf the Barnsley NHS Hospital Trust (funded by Recycling Action Yorkshire) *****ed to improve wastes management (both in terms of recovery performance and local contractual arrangements) at one of the trust’s central sites and act as a regional example of good practice. The successful completion of this work led to two further pieces of work for the Trust: one producing an Excel model to predict cost of waste management per patient/bed and the other looking at the feasibility of using the central site as a waste transfer facility to accept materials from surrounding satellite sites.

One project of particular interest that Ashley managed was on behalf of a company that is considering establishing a pyrolysis plant. This project involved forecasting waste arisings on a regional basis and identifying capacity gaps, compiling a register of current PFI contracts already in operation or in the procurement process, identification of disposal/treatment process gate fees and broad assessment of emerging waste treatment technologies.

WRAP and Defra work:
Prior to leaving Resource Futures, Ashley managed a significant research project that focused on municipal waste growth. The principle aim of this study was to inform a more fundamental understanding of the factors that influence growth in MSW by developing a set of detailed case studies. This project comprised the selection of 28 local authorities and involved an in-depth analysis of waste arisings data for the period 2001/02 – 2008/09. This was complemented by visits to each of the participating local authorities to discuss current and historic waste data recording / reporting, waste policy procedures and collection arrangements and authority-wide socio-demographic changes. A project report illustrated the key findings associated with growth / decline in Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) arisings together with an indication of the waste policy measures that appeared to successfully mitigate against waste growth. These case studies acted to contrast the situations between different areas, those that reported falling quantities of waste and those where waste arisings have continued to rise.

Ashley has delivered a series of projects through the WRAP ROTATE one of which involved scrutinizing the service costs of high performing local authorities and another national pioneering piece of work called the ‘Home logistics’ project that looked at means of bolstering material recycling capture rates through a better understanding of public behaviour. He has recently delivered another contract on behalf of WRAP that involved reconfiguring waste collection arrangements in a ‘hard-to-reach’ housing estate in South Norfolk with a view to increasing levels of recycling in the area. Over the past two years, he has managed a number of Defra WIP LASU projects that involved waste composition studies to evaluate the performance of existing kerbside source separation arrangements in Alnwick and Calderdale. Another LASU project he managed involved assessing a series of options for introducing recycling services to residents in the West End of London.
He acted as Project Director on a 10 month WRAP project that evaluated 19 UK wide food waste collection trials with a view to producing good practice guidance for local authorities to use and a series of case study examples for reference purposes. The evaluation involved an in-depth look at the capital and revenue costs associated with carrying out the collections. This work proved to be instrumental in determining separate food waste collections at the kerbside at a UK level.

He was also Project Director on a Defra contract *****ed to consolidate all of the MSW composition work that has been carried out in the UK over the past 5 years, to help determine a more informed consensus on the level of BMW and other material components. The analysis will lend itself to more strategic decision making on ceiling material diversion levels and waste minimization initiatives.

Local authority experience:
During the course of his career, Ashley has harnessed a number of good working relationships with local authorities throughout the UK. In particular, he has delivered a number of projects on behalf of the City of Westminster Council. He managed a 12 month four season waste composition study *****ed to quantify the composition and volume of household, commercial and street cleansing waste generated each year in the city. This led to further work involving a scrutiny of their Waste Recycling Plan to assess whether the targets and measures in place were sufficient to reach and exceed their BVPI waste recycling and composting targets. A particularly interesting study followed which assessed the feasibility of collecting and composting leaves derived from street sweepings in compliance with the PAS 100 Composting standard. Following chemical analysis of a series of samples, the project highlighted some positive results which has allowed the Council to now compost leaves from streets that would otherwise be landfilled.

Previous relevant experience:
Ashley has carried out BPEO work on the technology of one of the preferred bidders for the Lancashire PFI tender. Whilst at SLR, Ashley worked on the Wembley Redevelopment Programme, looking at the sizing and specification of waste management facilities at the adjacent residential and commercial development. He also contributed to the non-municipal waste management strategy for the Greater London Authority with a particular emphasis on hazardous and construction and demolition waste. Ashley has a broad understanding of household hazardous waste and has conducted a number of research projects on post-consumer batteries. He has carried out research on the economic and environmental (dis) benefits of the proposed directive on batteries. He has managed a project on behalf of SEPA’s Priority Waste Stream Programme that focused on waste oil and batteries.