At a High Court hearing last month the Waste Authority claimed that directions issued by Mayor Livingstone were impeding its bid to reduce landfill and seek more ecologically sound methods of waste disposal.
Today, quashing part of one direction issued by Mayor Livingstone and the whole of another Mr Justice Goldring said the terms of the Mayor’s directions went further than they should have done.
However, the judge’s decision has effectively been put on ice for the time being, pending appeal moves by the Mayor against it.
The case relates to the attempt by the Authority to hire private sector waste companies to divert waste from landfill.
The Authority, which is responsible for waste disposal for the Boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Richmond upon Thames, had asked the judge quash the two directions issued by the Mayor in December 2006 and January 2007 restricting the authority in the technologies that could be used on the waste contract.
“Anxious”
Its counsel, Michael Fordham QC, told the court today: “WLWA is anxious – but has been prevented by the Mayor from being able – to commence a procurement exercise for the diversion of a relatively small proportion, 30,000 to 110,00 tonnes per annum, of its biodegradable municipal waste away from landfill, inviting companies to offer solutions or forms of technology to achieve this.”
He said WLWA did not intend to specify in advance that it required any particular disposal or treatment method to be used.
Adopting this would, he said, allow WLWA to select the most desirable option from the widest possible range of tenders.
Judgment
Today, in a judgment which appears to have given WLWA all they ask, the judge quashed a section of the Mayor’s December direction which stipulated WLWA should:
- Ensure waste was subjected to pre-treatment to remove as much as is practicable before the residual waste is incinerated;
- Ensure flexibility is maintained in order to allow movement up the waste hierarchy by providing that there should be no guaranteed minimum tonnage contracts;
- Ensure state of the art emission limiting equipment and monitoring systems are used; ensure combined heat and power technologies are used.
The January direction amplified the first one.
The judge said that in his view the direction in respect of “state of the art” equipment would shut out options which would accord with waste strategy when read as a whole and the likely consequence would be the continuation of landfill.
He said it also seemed to him that the same considerations applied to the requirements in respect of combined heat and power.
And, as far as pre-treatment was concerned he said this again could lead to continuation of landfill.
Bids
Mr Fordham explained during the hearing last month: “WLWA is committed to considering fairly and objectively all the bids it receives, and to selecting the bid or bids which are overall most beneficial.
He said that one known candidate to tender is the Lakeside energy-from-waste facility scheduled to open in July 2008 in Colnbrook, near Slough, only a few hundred metres outside of WLWA’s boundary.
He continued: “WLWA would like to be able to consider a tender involving Lakeside as one of the options available to it, along with any other tenders it receives. The intention or known consequence of the Mayor’s actions is to prevent this.”
He said that the effect of the directions issued by the Mayor was to require WLWA to include certain conditions with which potential tenderers would have to apply, and to require it to complete a number of other tasks before it could take the next step on the procurement exercise.
This imposition of rigid rules, he argued, did not fit with the Mayor’s written strategy policy document that contains various interrelated considerations, principles, goals and priorities with the aim of achieving the best practicable option for the management of waste.
However, the Mayor’s counsel, John Bates, summing up the case in what he called “a nutshell”, said: “Should one waste authority’s short term financial gain be put before London’s long term environmental and financial gain?”
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He said that the Mayor was entitled to make the directions, and that the exercise of waste management judgment and the weighing of the issues involved was “entirely a matter for the mayor”.
When the case ends the judge will reserve his decision, and give a judgment in writing at a later date.
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