The arrangement, which is scheduled to start in April 2017, will see the successful bidder treat 130,000 tonnes of municipal refuse per annum for a period of up to 15 years.
Residual waste from the West Yorkshire city is currently sent to merchant energy recovery plants under an interim contract with Associated Waste Management (AWM) – after plans to build an EfW facility on its existing Bowling Back Lane site were abandoned.
Defra had previously awarded an estimated £62 million in PFI credits to the council, with a consortium led by Skanska appointed to lead the project. But in 2013, the department withdrew its support (see letsrecycle.com story).
Going back to the drawing board, the council published a draft waste strategy last year to consider alternatives for refuse treatment and collection – which was adopted by the executive in January 2015.
Speaking to letsrecycle.com, Richard Longcake, principal officer for waste services in Bradford, said the council wanted an arrangement that offered a competitive price for less tonnage, similar to the council’s current set-up.
‘Mark 2’
He said: “The PFI build time was estimated for three years so we had in place interim contracts. They are due to end in 2017 therefore this procurement is for new facilities to succeed. The interim contracts have proved quite successful, so the council did not just want to do a PFI Mark 2.”
The new contract is expected to compliment a move toward a reduced residual waste capacity for residents in the city, with new ‘skinny’ bins to be rolled out to residents on a ‘zone by zone’ basis over the coming weeks.
And, the council is also reviewing the frequency of its in-house refuse collection – despite having to retain weekly rounds as a condition of the £4.6 million funding it received under the DCLG Weekly Support Fund.
Mr Longcake added: “We are going to be consulting on a number of issues with the public. We are expecting to be consulting on proposals to move towards fortnightly collections of refuse.”
The procurement, which will be open to expressions of interest shortly, is due to be completed by late 2016.
Recycling
Bradford has also experienced a surge in recycling over 2014/15, the result of doubling the frequency of its commingled recycling and separate paper collections from monthly to fortnightly, the council claims.
According to Mr Longcake, this has meant a 19% rise in tonnages collected since 2013/14. In that year, the council recorded an overall rate of 50.78%.
The paper and card collected is sent to the UPM paper mill Shotton, while the commingled materials are processed via Glass UK’s facility in Barnsley.
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