Nottinghamshire PAIN (People against Incineration) has won a major victory against Veolia in the High Court. Like Safe Waste in Shropshire, they made a request to view the actual figures contained in the Waste Contract with Veolia to see if Nottinghamshire people were getting value for money. Unlike Shropshire Council, Nottinghamshire was willing to let Shlomo Dowen (campaign member and co-ordinator of UKWIN) see the books. Veolia promptly put an injunction on Nottinghamshire Council to stop it. Read the rest for yourselves.......
(However, Shropshire Council has deferred allowing us to see THEIR books until the outcome of the Nottingham case was decided. We are still waiting, Laura Rowley, Head of Resources!)
We also want to know why there is a £2.6 million discrepancy between payments made to Veolia under the Waste Contract and the total of Veolia's 12 monthly invoices. We discovered that just by examining the papers we were allowed to see!
Tuesday, October 06, Nottingham Evening Post
TAXPAYERS in Notts paid nearly £22m to have their household rubbish disposed of in the last financial year.Figures – which also show we threw away 420,000 tonnes of municipal waste last year – have come to light after a High Court battle won by eco-campaigners who wanted full details of Notts County Council's £850m PFI deal with Veolia Environment Services.
Campaigner Shlomo Dowen, from People Against Incineration (Pain), hopes the information may yield evidence he can use at a public inquiry today into plans for an incinerator at Rainworth, also to be run by Veolia.
Mr Dowen, 47, of Forest Town, said he initially made the request because he wanted to find out how many tonnes of waste Veolia has billed the taxpayer for in Notts – and to investigate if we are overpaying. He insists that Rainworth is the wrong site for an incinerator.He said: "It's the wrong site and the wrong technology. "This is a green field site that's to be restored to heath land and would be included as the Sherwood Forest Regional park. "The proposal was put forward at a time when waste in the county was increasing year after year. But in the last eight years the quantity of waste has actually fallen rather than risen, so it's no longer needed."We feel more should be done to reduce our waste and to recycle the compost we waste." We would rather see Notts County Council invest in an anaerobic digester for kitchen waste and taking weekly collections of food waste," he added.
Figures obtained by the Evening Post about the 26-year PFI contract show last financial year it cost the Notts taxpayer:
£32.14 to deal with compost per tonne/unit.
£29.66 to deal with rubbish for landfill per tonne/unit when collected from a person's home.
£36.34 to deal with rubbish for landfill per tonne/unit when collected from a tip.
£59.75 per tonne/unit to deal with recycling collected from a person's home until December 2008. This cost then dropped to £23.07 per tonne/unit once the £14m Materials Recycling Facility (MRF) opened near Mansfield.
Veolia wanted to keep secret the financial details of its contract with Notts County Council for commercial reasons. The council said it wanted to release the details and brought the High Court case last week. Its legal costs will be met by Veolia.
Mick Burrows, council chief executive, said: "We take our responsibility towards our tax-paying public very seriously and being honest, open and transparent is fundamental to that responsibility." We work with many contractors and are very sensitive to commercial interests. However, as a public body, we must ensure we comply with the law and are transparent and accountable."
Broadly speaking, the district and borough councils are responsible for collecting rubbish. The county council is responsible for arranging for the disposal of waste. It also provides the household waste recycling centres, commonly known as tips.The public has the right to inspect the council's accounts during one month every a year.But Veolia took out an injunction against the council releasing the details after it emerged that Mr Dowen was set to obtain copies of the contract. The Audit Commission and Mr Dowen submitted evidence to the High Court in London as "interested parties" and Mr Justice Cranston found in favour of making the details public.
