Councillors at Gloucestershire County Council have narrowly voted against a motion to call on the cabinet to cancel its waste contract with Urbaser Balfour Beatty (UBB).

The extraordinary council meeting, held on Wednesday (18 February), was called by Labour councillors Lesley Williams, Barry Kirby, Tracy Millard, Steve Lydon, and Steve McHale to vote on whether the cabinet should be called on to cancel the council’s waste contract with UBB, which involves the construction of a controversial waste incinerator at Javelin Park.

The council has estimated that cancelling the contract could cost between £100 million and £150 million.

The councillors proposed the motion in response to ‘widespread public opposition to the building of an incinerator at Javelin Park’ (which, they argued, the cabinet had ‘ignored’), and in the belief that there would be ‘viable alternative waste disposal solutions, such as MBT, available’.

Hundreds of protestors stood outside Shire Hall before the meeting on Wednesday, but despite their presence and the arguments of the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green councillors, the vote was lost by 27 votes to 24, with the Conservative administration and UKIP councillors voting against the motion.

Those voting against the motion cited the cost of breaking the contract, and highlighted that the plant could offer financial savings on waste disposal and generate renewable electricity.

The Liberal Democrats had also proposed that an inquiry be held into how the decision to award the contract to UBB was made, but both the Conservative and the Labour party councillors voted against this motion, and it was quashed.

Cancelling contract would ‘bankrupt the council’

Speaking after the vote, Leader of Gloucestershire County Council, Conservative councillor Mark Hawthorne, commented: “[This] decision is good news for Gloucestershire’s taxpayers, and good news for Gloucestershire’s environment. The Javelin Park plant won’t just save taxpayers £150 million, money that’s vital to protect frontline services, it will also cut Gloucestershire’s carbon dioxide emissions by over 20,000 tonnes each year.

“Combined with our target of 70 per cent recycling, this will put Gloucestershire amongst the most environmentally-friendly counties in Europe for waste disposal.”

UKIP councillors Colin Guyton, Richard Leppington and Alan Preest added: “We are very clear that cancellation of the contract would cost Gloucestershire County Council taxpayers up to £100 million. We believe this would bankrupt our county and would be a catastrophe for all residents, business and our entire community.

“Our decision, has been a difficult one, and has been guided by what we believe to be a responsible, pragmatic and rational analysis of the facts and options as they currently stand.”

Labour councillor Stephen McHale told Resource that the party members were “naturally disappointed with the outcome” as the “power plant will be out of date when it comes online”.

A spokesperson for Gloucester Vale Against Incineration (GlosVAIN), who protested at the meeting on Wednesday, said: "GlosVAIN were very disappointed that the Conservative xouncillors who voted against the planning application in 2013 or who expressed their opposition to the incinerator were all whipped into voting against the motion.

"The petition of over 7600 local people was totally ignored and the costs of cancellation which were quoted as around £100 million were just misleading and incorrect."

He added that the figure has not been itemised, and stated his belief that the council is including the loss of energy production in this figure, rather than the direct cost of cancelling the contract. He added that Norfolk County Council paid just under £34 million for cancelling its incineration contract and that, as the project in Gloucester is not too dissimilar from the one in Norfolk, the true cost could be closer to this figure.

Stroud District Council taking legal action

In related news, Stroud District Council announced earlier this week (17 February) that it is submitting a legal challenge to Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles regarding his decision to approve plans for the incinerator to be built in the area.

The proposed incinerator at Javelin Park, near Haresfield, forms part of Urbaser Balfour Beatty’s (UBB) waste contract with Gloucestershire County Council (estimated to be worth approximately £500 million). According to the developers, once built, the facility will have the capacity to burn 190,000 tonnes of waste a year and produce electricity to power approximately 26,000 homes.

Permission decision

Plans for the incinerator were first approved in 2013 by Gloucestershire County Council, but were scuppered by delays in planning permission.

Following a change in local government however, the new council’s planning committee refused planning consent for the incinerator on the grounds that, by the end of the waste contract, the technology would be antiquated and ‘inflexible’. However, when UBB appealed the council’s decision, the application was called in for inquiry by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

Last month, Pickles announced that the plans for the plant could go ahead, adding that dismissing the appeal would have resulted in ‘a delay of some years at least in moving away from disposal to landfill of the County’s residual municipal solid waste’.

It is this decision that the district council is now challenging.

A spokesperson for the district council said the challenge is based upon the inspector’s interpretation of Gloucestershire’s Waste Core Strategy (WCS), specifically landscape issues relating to the visual impact of the height and scale of the facility. The spokesperson said: “At the inquiry held last year the district councils, [Gloucestershire] County Council and those previously involved in the drafting of the WCS were all surprised by the way that the inspector applied the elements of the strategy which were designed to protect the landscape.

“Our aim is to have those elements applied correctly, in the way that they were intended, and to limit any adverse landscape and subsequent economic impact and maintain the beauty and the economy of the county.”

Find out more about the UBB Javelin Park incinerator.