Norfolk County Council has announced that it will send its residual waste to Suffolk County Council’s Great Blakenham incinerator until 2020, while it finds a ‘sustainable long-term solution’ for its waste.

The inter-county deal, which was set up last year, sees around 40,000 tonnes of Norfolk’s residual waste sent to SITA UK’s new 269,000 tonne per annum energy-from-waste (EfW) incineration plant in Great Blakenham.

The two-year interim waste management deal was brought into being to manage Norfolk’s waste after the council abandoned its incineration plans in April 2014 due to costs arising from planning delays. The decision meant that the council had to pay the contractor, Cory Wheelabrator, around £30 million.

As Norfolk County Council has still to agree a long-term solution to deal with its residual waste, it has decided to extend its deal with Suffolk County Council until 2020. This new deal forms part of the council’s work to find adequate waste management options for its 210,000 tonnes of residual waste when its current waste arrangements end in 2016, using ‘facilities that are already up and running inside or outside Norfolk’.

The council currently sends residual waste to the Great Blakenham and Allington EfW facilities, landfill, and to Rotterdam for use as a refuse-derived fuel.

‘No incinerator will be built in our county’

Speaking of the deal, UKIP Councillor Toby Coke, Chairman of Norfolk County Council’s Environment, Development and Transport Committee, said: “I am pleased that we have extended our agreement with Suffolk as it is vital that we have secure arrangements in place to deal with Norfolk’s residual waste. I am confident that this autumn, we will have pinned down services for dealing with the remaining 170,000 tonnes each year for the next four years.

“But we still need a sustainable long-term solution that is acceptable to our communities in Norfolk. That is one of our most pressing tasks because with the benefits of the economic growth forecast for our county and with more new homes being built here, it is inevitable that we will be dealing with more waste in our county in the future.

“We hope to have that settled by 2020. But whatever we agree is right for Norfolk, it will be in line with the 20 waste policies that the county council agreed in December last year.

“In a nutshell, that means no incinerator will be built in our county to deal with our residents’ waste, and we will be looking for waste services that squeeze more valuable resources out of our rubbish. And wherever possible, we will be looking to use smaller local area waste treatment facilities so that we deal with waste as close to the places where it was generated as possible.”

Suffolk County Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment and Public Protection, Councillor Matthew Hicks, added: “This is an extension of current arrangements which benefit both local authorities, saving each county in the region of £1 million between 2014 and 2016.

“The extension of this agreement will not increase the volume of waste moved into Suffolk and the number of trucks transporting waste from Norfolk will not change. There are currently eight movements each day, moving around 40,000 tonnes of residual waste from Norfolk.

“This is a good deal for taxpayers in both counties with both councils benefitting from economies of scale, because sending more waste to the Great Blakenham plant reduces the treatment cost per tonne.”

Find out more about the Norfolk/Suffolk waste agreement.