Norfolk to consider cancelling EfW contract

Controversial plans to build a 268,000 tonne per year capacity incinerator in Kings Lynn will face further scrutiny after Norfolk county councillors this week voted overwhelmingly in favour of holding a debate on the issue.

At an extraordinary meeting of the council on Monday (May 13), councillors agreed a motion by 81 votes to one to make good, as a matter of urgency, the democratic deficit by holding a debate regarding the previous councils decision to award a 500 million, 25-year PFI contract for the energy-from-waste (EfW) incinerator to Cory Wheelabrator (see letsrecycle.com story).

The news follows the results of the local elections on May 2, which saw the Conservatives who largely support the incinerator plans lose their overall majority on the council and UKIP make significant gains to become the main opposition party.

UKIP have come out strongly against the project, with the partys leader in the council, Richard Coke, pledging in his election manifesto to fight against the Conservative controlled Norfolk county council decision to build an incinerator.

Should councillors vote against the incinerator plans at the debate, the issue would go to the council cabinet, which would then have the power to proceed with the incinerator plans, call for more evidence or even scrap the plans altogether.

Penalties

As part of the agreed motion to hold a debate, tabled by Conservative councillor John Dobson, Norfolks cabinet scrutiny committee will also consider the contractual penalties which would arise in the event of the council withdrawing from the agreement with Cory Wheelabrator at a meeting on June 4 2013.

In preparation for the debate, the motion states that council officers will produce short, succinct reports outlining the need for the incinerator. These reports are to include information on the amount of waste forecast to require disposal at the incinerator, environmental and health risks and the impact of increased traffic around the facility.

No date has yet been set for the debate, but according to the motion it will take place within five weeks of the date of final submissions in the ongoing public inquiry into the councils decision award the incinerator contract.

Public inquiry

The seven-week inquiry into the project was originally called in by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles in June 2012 and the final submissions are due to be made this week on May 16 and 17 (see letsrecycle.com story).

Opponents of the EfW incinerator, including the campaign group Kings Lynn Without Incineration (KLWIN) and King’s Lynn and West Norfolk borough council, claim that the plant will damage air quality and say alternative technologies to incineration will be more cost effective for the council.

Cory Environmental partners in the Cory Wheelabrator incinerator consortium with US energy from waste specialists Wheelabrator Technologies said it did not wish to comment on the issue while the public inquiry was ongoing.

When asked if he was confident the incinerator plans would still go ahead, Conservative councillor and former council leader Bill Borrett told letsrecycle.com: It is up to the council. If the council decides not to proceed with the project, even though it would be very expensive to cancel the contract, that will be the councils decision.

He added: I will still be standing there on the day giving my reasons to support the project. Personally, having looked at plant in great detail I believe that it is the right plant for Norfolk. We need to make 140 million savings from the council budget, and the Kings Lynn project will save 8 million a year on our current waste disposal costs, which starts to add up to a sizeable amount of money in the long term.

He said the motion to hold a debate on the incinerator plans was put forward by Conservative council members because 40 of 84 councillors are new and even through the decision process was followed absolutely to the rules, we felt it sensible to let all the councillors have their say and to decide because there is nobody with an overall majority it seems to me sensible to give all the new members time to get up to speed with the technical details of the project.

Local elections

The local elections left no party with an overall majority to control Norfolk council, and yesterdays extraordinary meeting had been called to elect a leader of the council. However, a proposal put forward for Mr Borrett to again lead the council failed by 40 votes to 43 and a further meeting to try and elect a cabinet will take place on May 24 as a result. In the meantime, there is no council cabinet and control of the authority has been left to acting managing director Anne Gibson.

However, Mr Borrett said he did not believe the loss of 20 Conservative seats in the Norfolk county council elections was the result of his partys support of the incinerator plans.
He said: It is an issue, but there are a lot of other pressing issues such as education and children services. I would not want to give the impression that the incinerator was the only issue the people of Norfolk were interested in.

He added: The same trends were seen at elections in Lincolnshire, Essex and Cambridge where there are no plans for an incinerator. It looks to me that the rise of UKIP is the key.

It is estimated that the proposed Kings Lynn EfW facility will provide enough electricity to power around 36,000 homes as well as producing additional steam which can be utilised by local businesses. The facility’s capacity is set to be filled by a combination of residual household waste supplied by the council under the PFI contract, and waste from local businesses.