Councillor Gary Hopkins, cabinet member for the environment, told letsrecycle.com that, now that the Liberal Democrats had taken control of the council from previous incumbent Labour, they expected to push ahead with their manifesto commitment to ensure an EfW plant was not built.
The Liberal Democrats made the decision and it is for the officers to carry out, it is an absolutely key part of our manifesto
Councillor Gary Hopkins
“The Liberal Democrats made the decision and it is for the officers to carry out, it is an absolutely key part of our manifesto,” Cllr Hopkins explained.
“We wanted a potential variety of solutions and we don't want to centralise arrangements,” he added.
Bristol is currently seeking around £80 million in PFI funding for waste treatment as part of a joint bid with South Gloucestershire council and North Somerset county council as the West of England Partnership and had based its Outline Business Case on a reference technology of energy-from-waste.
Cllr Hopkins said that the council's latest move may have been made “just in time” and said he believed that Bristol would be able to prove to the other West of England partnership members that alternatives were available through analysis studies.
Administration
The Labour Party, which had ruled the hung council despite the Liberal Democrats being the largest single party in the city, relinquished control of the city council after increasing pressure from both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party over the divisive issue of an incinerator being developed in the region.
Labour leader Helen Holland resigned after the minority administration refused to accept a proposed amendment to remove money earmarked for an incinerator from the budget, as Labour claimed the move would cost residents “huge additional costs” in Council Tax. Liberal Democrat leader Barbara Janke took charge in her stead.
Cllr Hopkins said: “We didn't expect to be in power until June and the politics down here are quite amazing because the Conservatives actually put Labour in power, but, over the past seven or eight months, they have been trying to distance themselves from the Labour party.”
Last October, the Liberal Democrats claimed that Labour was restricting the technology options available to the West of England Partnership and that such tactics would saddle them with an unpopular energy-from-waste facility (see letsrecycle.com story).
The then-Labour controlled council leadership denied that it had tied the authority to the use of incineration technology and claimed that the council would welcome “the best solution taking into account all relevant factors”.
Bristol
Cllr Hopkins claimed the Liberal Democrats had been instrumental in improving Bristol's recycling and composting rate during their last period in office, which ended in May 2007, helping to raise it from 12% to 40% through initiatives and putting emphasis on waste reduction as well as recycling.
He said: “People in Bristol are quite receptive to our objective to improve recycling and environmental concerns but zero progress has been made on the front in the last 18 months and we are going to be focussing a lot of efforts on getting people back into improving recycling and waste reduction.”
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