Northern Ireland’s Southern Waste Management Partnership ((SWaMP2008), has decided to abandon its plans to procure a long-term waste infrastructure contract because of a legal challenge.

SWaMP2008 acts on behalf of eight constituent local councils in the South and West of Northern Ireland and was set up in order to procure and deliver a waste project that would divert biodegradable municipal waste from landfill. It invited expressions of interest in its procurement in June 2009.

However, in June of this year, SWaMP2008 received a formal challenge to the legality of its ‘revised bidder consortium’ following the introduction of two new partners to the preferred bidder, the Quinn Group. After taking legal advice, SWaMP concluded that it could not ‘risk incurring the significant costs that would be involved in contesting the challenge with no certainty of success’. Plans to procure the contract, reportedly worth £500m over 25 years, have now been abandoned.

A spokesman for SWaMP2008 said that it had reached its decision with great regret.

‘As a publicly-funded organisation, SWaMP2008 has reluctantly concluded that its interests, and those of its stakeholders, are not best served by engaging in an expensive, lengthy and ultimately uncertain legal process, and consequently the procurement process is to be terminated.

‘SWaMP2008 remains resolute in its commitment to managing the waste of its constituent councils. While it is not in a position to complete the successful procurement of the residual waste treatment project, its attention will now turn to addressing shorter term waste needs in the region.’

SWaMP 2008 was one of three separate procurements being proposed by Waste Management Groups under the Strategic Waste Infrastructure Programme (SWIP). SWIP was established to ensure that Northern Ireland fulfils its obligation to contribute ‘on an equitable basis to the UK’ in meeting its 2020 targets under the EU Landfill Directive.

Speaking to the Assembly on Monday (15 October), Northern Ireland’s Environment Minister, Alex Attwood, highlighted the risks inherent in waste management procurements:

“[T]his development and my general view on the waste procurement strategy, demonstrates the need for tight monitoring and vigilance on procurement projects, the risks inherent in such projects (including legal challenge), the need to challenge and be seen to be challenging in relation to the contracts (in relation to affordability and deliverability) and to deploy best practice and best oversight in relation to these procurements.

“We are now in a critical phase in the Strategic Waste Infrastructure Programme - as it has been since I became Environment Minister. There is a need for certainty and avoidance of doubt. In the coming weeks, my focus will be to subject the remaining two procurement exercises being undertaken by councils to robust and ongoing scrutiny to ensure that waste procurement is modelled to serve needs of the councils in the North, to do so in a way that is fully compliant with European legislation, is affordable, is deliverable and is the necessary and best option for our waste requirements.”

The Department of Environment has provided funding to meet pre-procurement costs incurred by the three Waste Management Groups. To date, £9.2 million has been provided to the three groups, with £3.1 million of financial support given to the SWaMP partnership since 2008.

SwaMP2008 covers the councils of Armagh, Banbridge, Cookstown, Craigavon, Dungannon and South Tyrone, Fermanagh, Newry and Mourne and Omagh.