The proposed site of the incinerator at Saddlebow. Picture: Ian Burt.
Norwich City Council burner letter gives King’s Lynn anti-incinerator campaigners hope
by DAN GRIMMER
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
6:30 AM
Anti-incinerator campaigners have hailed what they say could be a game-changing moment in the battle against a waste burner in Norfolk, after the leader of Norwich City Council wrote to the environment secretary to make clear the authority does not support such plants.
It had been understood that, after letters supporting the plant were sent to her by the leaders of a string of district councils in Norfolk, environment secretary Caroline Spelman was set to release £169m of government funding to Norfolk County Council for the £500m incinerator in King’s Lynn.
In November she with-held the Private Finance Credits for the Saddlebow plant, saying she needed the county council to convince her that there was “broad support” for the scheme.
But, with the leader of an authority which generates about a quarter of the county’s waste having written to stress the city council is not in favour of waste being tackled through incineration, campaigners claim the environment secretary no longer has the evidence of that “broad support”, so should not award the credits.
City council leader Brenda Arthur’s letter, sent yesterday, makes clear that City Hall’s position on incineration has not changed since previous proposals for one to be built in Costessey were discussed in 2007.
The council passed a motion then that the authority was against any form of waste treatment which involved incineration.
Earlier yesterday, Green and Liberal Democrat city councillors collectively wrote to Ms Arthur and Norwich City Council chief executive Laura McGillivray urging them to write to Mrs Spelman to point out City Hall’s opposition.
Mrs Arthur insisted she had been planning to pen a letter anyway and it was not that pressure which made her do so.
She said: “I would have thought our position was very clear, given the motion we agreed has been in the public domain since 2007.
“I thought our view was out there long before all this started, so I had not felt the need to write before now. “I had waited because, as I made clear to the leader of the Green group over the weekend, I was due for a briefing at City Hall yesterday morning to make sure nothing had changed since the motion was originally passed.”
Liz Truss, South West Norfolk MP, said last week that she feared Mrs Spelman was on the brink of awarding the credits based on the letters of support she had received from councils such as South Norfolk, Broadland, North Norfolk and Breckland Council leader William Nunn, who sent his as the chairman of the Norfolk Waste Partnership.
Those letters sparked controversy and complaints from some opposition councillors that the leaders had acted without putting the matter to their respective councils.
Nick Daubney, leader of West Norfolk Council, which organised a poll showing 65,000 people were against the incinerator, had sent his own letter to Mrs Spelman urging her not to award the credits.
And he said the city council’s restatement of its opposition to incinerators should convince Mrs Spelman not to award the credits.
He said: “I feel Mrs Spelman was taking the silence from the city council as support, but we now have the two main urban centres in Norfolk saying that this is wrong. How can that demonstrate broad consensus?
“I think Mrs Spelman needs to talk to us. I’m happy to sit down with her, the two MPs and [county council leader] Derrick Murphy face to face.
“We are calling on legal advice here, because this decision needs to be based on the criteria which has been set down.
“I know people have been calling on us to launch a judicial review, but you can only go down that route once. However, I think she needs to know it is our firm belief that if she awards the credits against the criteria which has been laid down, that is a risk she could face.”
Environmental consultant Richard Burton, who has long opposed the incinerator, said: “With clear opposition from both the council that would host the incinerator (West Norfolk) and the council that takes County Hall’s own waste (Norwich), it would now indeed represent a tearing up of the PFI rules should the secretary of state release the credits.”
Mike Knights, deputy chairman of King’s Lynn Without INcineration (KLWIN), said: “It would have been nice to have had this letter sent a bit sooner, but I am very grateful that it has been done.
“The county council has relied on the silence from Norwich City Council being interpreted as them being in favour and they cannot pretend that anymore as it is in black and white that they are against it.
“If PFI money is now awarded then DEFRA would be very vulnerable to a High Court challenge, as it goes against their own criteria of needing broad support.”
The county council, which says the plant would save millions of pounds a year, agreed in March last year to award the contract for the incinerator to Cory Wheelabrator, but it has yet to be signed.
The council’s planning committee, which will decide whether to grant permission for the plant, last week agreed it would need to visit the site ahead of any decision.
Bill Borrett, cabinet member for environment and waste at Norfolk County Council, said: “The sending of such a letter at this very late stage of this project cannot be coincidental.
“I can fully imagine the pressure that Brenda Arthur, as leader of a minority administration at City Hall, is under from campaigners via the Green Party in particular.
“However I am disappointed at this 11th hour flurry of activity since she personally attended a meeting of the Norfolk Waste Partnership on December 19 and raised no objections to the Willows proposal or the strategy. “Neither did she do so when openly challenged through questions at her own council meeting in November - just six weeks ago.
“In addition, I was at the September meeting of the Norfolk Waste Management Partnership when Norwich reaffirmed its continuing support for the waste strategy’s nine objectives.
“I am disappointed at this last minute intervention, but not surprised because of the political state of play in the city. “
dan.grimmer@archant.co.uk
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17 comments
The people who would have to inhale the toxic dioxins night and day from a waste incinerator burning 268.000 tonnes of waste that is mostly recyclable every year for the next 25 years on their doorstep are the ones that should count. 65.516 people said they did not want a waste incinerator in West Norfolk. It is pure ignorance by Norfolk County Council cabinet members to try every dirty trick in the book to force this on us. Thousands upon thousands of toxic ash will have to be buried in landfill. And the rest will go down drains into the River Great Ouse that runs into The Wash and would poison every living creature there. Waste incinerators are not properly tested, nano particles are not tested yet these are the dioxins most dangerous to health. It seems that greed is more important than health. I would like to thank Brenda Arthur for seeing things for what they are. And for her excellent letter to Caroline Spelman. Also I would like thank West Norfolk Council who are looking at alternatives.
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Jack
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Norfolk County councillor Philip Hardy, who has defected to the Conservatives, may have had some influence. I suspect the Green party and the Lib-Dems will do well at the next county elections especially West Norfolk. If the incinerator gets built will be the end of the Tory stronghold. The 85 mitre stack will be a monument to how the Tories committed political suicide by ignoring democracy.
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Choice
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Borretts mouth is open again, this is a quote from lets recycle "Bill Borrett, Conservative cabinet member for environment and waste at Norfolk county council, told letsrecycle.com that the project still had broad consensus because the majority of people in Norfolk and district councils supported it – including Breckland district council, Broadland district council, Great Yarmouth borough council, South Norfolk council and North Norfolk district council. He added that when Norfolk agreed to award the £500 million, 25-year contract to build the EfW plant to the CoryWheelabrator consortium in March 2011, all the district councils in Norfolk supported it." I was at the cabinet meeting 7th March and West Norfolk Council made their stance very clear. Perhaps Borrett has forgotten Nick Daubneys opposition and emotive pleading as well as Murphys abnoxious manner to him and the public in the face of that opposition.
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Canary Boy
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
And I'd like to congratulate Brenda Arthur for taking a stand and making Norwich's voice count at this critical time. And knowing Brenda, this isn't politically motivated, as Bill Borrett suggests. The incinerator proposals as planned are simply unsustainable. There is a better answer than burning and landfilling.It starts with reduce-reuse-recycle. And once we do those things as well as we can, then, and only then, should we look at treatment. Norfolk just put the cart before the horse. And they quite liked the look of the shiny new cart.
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R!ffy
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Norfolk have said , with the incinerator, they will reach the giddy heights of 55% recycling levels, in 2016. And that figure includes the aggregates that are a by-product of the burning process. Other areas of the UK are already achieving 70% recycling levels.And will get better.In 2011. Funny that. You'd think NCC would go and find out what these other authorities are doing. But no. They want to make their own mistakes. And our democratic processes give them that right. So says the Waste team at DEFRA. And no,in the good examples referred to, the resources that are recovered aren't sent off to India or China for landfilling, they are sent to UK reprocessors and genuinely replace the use of virgin products. Because they are source-seperated, so they are uncontaminated and of a high quality. Which is more than can be said of materials that are produced at recycling plants,(like the one in Costessey) which sadly are significantly contaminated and can end up being diverted to landfill somewhere. There are good answers for Norfolk's waste problem. NCC just need to open their eyes.
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R!ffy
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
What delegated authority has the Norfolk Waste Partnership got? Can someone supply details of their mandate, and whether their reports back to their councils were for reference only, as they had already taken a decision?
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bedoomed
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Well done Brenda Arthur, I say. Bill Borrett may try to explain the Norwich leader's decision as bowing to pressure from the Greens, but I know Brenda holds genuine personal strong views on issues to do with sustainability and the environment, and I prefer to believe that she has decided to make public the Norwich City Council view that WE DO NOT NEED AN INCINERATOR to sort out Norfolk's waste problems. We need a Waste Management Strategy and vision that seeks to reduce waste arisings, first and foremost; maximises recycling and resource recovery next; and then, only then, looks at the best options to treat and dispose. Bill Borrett does not know his own Joint Municipal Waste Strategy, as this ,even in its outdated and non-visionary form, does not support the Saddlebow proposals and contract as currently planned. In their hearts, Norfolk officers know this, but are now so completely stuck in the Saddlebow Incinerator rut that they can't open their eyes to other, better options. Which most certainly exist. And are substantially cheaper than the financial commitments we face with Saddlebow.
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R!ffy
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
I heard it rumoured that Cllr Borrett actually wasn't at the meetings of the Norfolk Waste Partnership to which he refers. Of course, it is difficult to check, because the minutes are not made available to the public.
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John Martin
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
I have now twice submitted an opinion one version of which I took any word out that may have caused the auto system to quake and still have not been published. I do hope I have not joined John Martin and my email address is blackballed!
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Joy, King's Lynn
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Mr Borrett, listen carerfully for I shall say this only once. Eleventh hour intervention = your tame council leaders sending identikit letters to Ms Spelman after meeting with the county council. Eleventh hour plus one minute intervention = not so very tame City Council coming out with their independent opinion. You asked for the opinions of the Councils. So you don't like the opinion of the most vital Council in Norfolk, the one that has to deal with the largest proportion of the County's rubbish, what a shame for you. You shouldn't have asked if you didn't want to hear the answer.
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alecto
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
How hypocritical is Bill Borrett? - He complains that Councillor Arthur must have been under pressure to send this letter when NCC obviously put pressure on district leaders to write to Caroline Spelman to show a "broad consensus" to gain WI Credits. Read the reports Bill - didn't one of their letters actually get sent the day before the meeting? and didn't they all start with the same paragraph?
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Christine
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Cllr Borrett needs to get off his high horse - if anyone has a life-time pass to the dirty tricks cupboard it's him. Funny he should have a pop at the Greens - anyone would think he had some sort of mystic direct line to their current state of thinking - that couldn't be down to his newly suited and booted chum Phil Hardy who is now suckling at the Tory teat?
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Fenscape
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
PFI contracts have been audited and the report declares tyhat they are' bad value for the money spent.' Those councils who ahve given their unsubstantiated support, have not got the remit on waste disposal, they are just collecting authorities. We have a contract with NCC and we have told them to recycle, reuse and reduce, some 10 years ago. Not much happened during these 10 years and now, pressed by landfill fines, our cllr's unable to act for so long, are panicking and trying to get away with this outdated filthy mass burner. Ms. Spelman is worried and rightly so.
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ingo wagenknecht
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
I'm all for landfill, we now have some lovely areas that were former landfill sites and the good thing is the damned developers can't build on them, hooray!
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John L Norton
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
PFI Contracts are already costing us billions as they are generally drawn up to greatly favour the Private companies, ie quotes of hospitals have ing to pay hundreds of pound to have a light bulb changed as "It is in the PFI Contract". On another point once again we have councils writing letters to say "We are not in favour of" something without specifying what they would do instead of incineration. What is their preferred alternative? They will say "More recycling", but in Waveney, we are at the top of tree with recycling figures of over 60%, this still leaves almoat 40% going to landfill, which is too much. And a lot of the "Recycled" waste, just gets shipped to ChinaIndia where they bury it instead!
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DaveG
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Spelman is in charge of the PFI money, not the incinerator. If she says no the money will be found from elsewhere. I personally think pfi is a negative form of funding anyway so the less she spends the better.
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christoph
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
How dare Borrett make statements like "I am disappointed at this last minute intervention, but not surprised because of the political state of play in the city. “ The leader of Norwich City Council has reaffirmed her councils democratically agreed decision. She has not bowed to pressure applied by Mr Borrett and his colleagues to go commando and off of her own back tell Spelman that her council supports the incinerator. WELL DONE Cllr Arthur and City Council I am sure the decision to actually send this letter was difficult in view of having seen how West Norfolk has been financially penalised due to its opposition to the proposal. However it was the correct thing to do because your silence had been interpreted as support by NCC. The political party that should be holding its head in shame are the Conservatives and I have told Cameron, Milliband, Clegg, Osborne and Alexander exactly that.
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Joy, King's Lynn
Tuesday, January 10, 2012