Under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme, the Government has already issued £1.79 billion to 31 local authorities and is preparing to award over £1 billion more in capital grants to councils for the development of long term waste treatment facilities.
Having been given further funding for the scheme in 2007, under the Comprehensive Spending Review, Defra has said that this round was the last planned round of provisions unless there was a policy change or any money remaining after all councils awaiting funds had received their allocation.
The waste disposal authorities expected to submit their Outline Business Cases (OBC) by today are: the West of England Partnership; Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull; Bedfordshire; Dorset; Derbyshire; South London Waste Partnership; Hereford; Hull and East Riding; and the North London Waste Authority.
The West London Waste Authority was also expected to submit an Outline Business Case, but a spokesman told letsrecycle.com that it was now pursuing a different option.
| Bidder | Expected Amount | |
| North London Waste Authority | £520m | |
| Bedfordshire | £110m | |
| Hertfordshire Waste Partnership | £100m | |
| Project Transform (Warwickshire, Coventry, Solihull) | £93m | |
| South London Waste Partnership | £85m | |
| West of England Partnership | £80m | |
| Hull & East Riding | £72m | |
| Dorset | £70m | |
| Derbyshire | -* | |
| *Declined to specify an amount until officially submitted | ||
Funding
The waste PFI scheme – which was launched in 2000 – was injected with £2 billion of funding from the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 (CSR07), which led to a total of £3.2 billion for Defra to issue when credits accumulated in previous spending rounds were taken into account.
A spokeswoman for Defra said: “To date £1.79 billion has already been allocated, leaving just over £1.4 billion for the projects in the application pipeline, this includes those who have already submitted and are awaiting approval for their OBC and those who are due to submit their OBC at the end of the month.”
One authority looking to garner almost half of the remaining funding is the North London Waste Authority (NLWA), who announced earlier this month that it was preparing an ambitious bid worth in the region of £520 million in PFI credits to deliver several facilities capable of treating the area's waste. (see letsrecycle.com story)
In addition to the large amount of credits being sought by NLWA the most notable OBC submissions are Hertfordshire Waste Partnership, which is seeking around £100 million to develop a combined heat and power energy-from-waste facility, and Project Transform – the combined bid of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull councils – which is hoping to develop incineration technology in Coventry with £93 million worth of credits.
Next Round
With this fourth round touted as the last, Defra has not ruled out further rounds in which local authorities could apply for funding, however, this is the only remaining round covered by the money outlined in the CSR.
The spokeswoman for Defra said: “Further award rounds may be arranged for authorities that do not fall into the first four rounds but only if and when the Waste Infrastructure Delivery Programme determines there are valid policy reasons to allocate further PFI credits, and unused PFI credits from the CSR07 period, if there are any, can be carried forward to 2011/12 or additional credits are allocated to Defra.”
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