Artist's impression of the Willows Power and Recycling plant in Saddlebow.

Councillors from Norfolk County Council will debate the future of the energy-from-waste contract for the Willows site in King’s Lynn at an ‘Extraordinary Meeting’ on Monday, 7 April.

The meeting will take place in the Council Chamber of County Hall at 10am to consider whether to terminate the contract currently held with a Cory Wheelabrator consortium, and pay a £20.3 million compensation figure.

King's Lynn incinerator details

The construction of the 250,000 tonne Willows Power and Recycling plant in Saddlebow has been a source of much contention within the county, with the borough of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk so opposed to it that it took the decision to withdraw from the county council’s waste strategy and withhold black bin waste to process it through a recycling process (read more in Resource 72).

The borough council entered into a 16-year conditional contract with Material Works that will see the waste management company construct a 35,000 tonnes per annum residual waste treatment facility in the area, combining anaerobic digestion and a ‘new’ polymerisation technique.

Further, the incinerator has been the subject of a public inquiry, after 65,000 people voted against the incinerator in a poll organised by the Borough Council of King’s Lynn & West Norfolk (which would host the proposed site). The council then wrote to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, urging him to take control of the planning application.

The future of the plant was also threatened after the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) announced it was to pull £169 million of Private Finance Initiative funding (PFI) from the £500-million project.

However, a report by the council’s Director of the Environment, Mike Jackson, and interim Head of Finance, Peter Timmins, found that rejecting the plan would ‘trigger an obligation for the County Council to make a payment of £20- £30 million within weeks of their decision, which would effectively bankrupt the council’. (Further, professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates that if the council were to go ahead with the plans now, but pull out at a later stage, they could face compensation costs of up to £100 million.) As such, the council had decided in October 2013 to press ahead with ‘revised’ plans.

GIB invests in plant

In a new twist, it was announced yesterday (19 March) that the Green Investment Bank (GIB) has committed to making an investment of £51 million into the project.

Speaking at the time, Shaun Kingsbury, Chief Executive of UK Green Investment Bank, said: "Not only will this new facility prevent over a quarter of a million tonnes of waste being sent to landfill each year, it will also generate enough electricity to power over 40,000 homes a year."

Despite this, following a request from Councillors Toby Coke, Richard Bird, Alexandra Kemp, Tim East, Andrew Boswell and John Dobson, the county council has agreed to meet on 7 April to discuss ‘whether, in view of the delay in the Secretary of State's planning decision in relation to the Willows, it wishes to recommend to Cabinet that the contract is allowed to terminate to avoid an increase in the compensation figure, currently capped at £20.3 million’.

The meeting will also discuss whether or not councillors would wish to continue to implement the revised project (as previously agreed) if planning permission is granted.

The meeting will be followed on the same day by an additional meeting of the cabinet to consider any recommendation that may arise from the council meeting.

Read more about the Willows Power and Recycling plant in Saddlebow, King's Lynn.