The Incinerator Debate: Key Decisions Day for Warwickshire County Council

9.00.00am GMT Tue 21st Oct 2008

Warwickshire County Council decides today whether it will proceed with a joint application for government Public Finance Initiative (PFI) credits with Coventry City Council and Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council, based on a project to build a new 305,000 tonnes Energy from Waste (EfW) plant on a site adjacent to the existing Coventry incinerator.

Warwickshire County Council Liberal Democrats are proposing a number of key changes to the Conservative Cabinet's recommendations to Full Council. These amendments would:

• re-commit the Council to the residual waste minimisation objectives of its current Waste Management Strategy;

• seek more ambitious recycling targets and therefore lower residual waste levels on which to base the final project;

• ensure that alternative technologies to EfW receive 'level playing field' treatment at the technical and financial evaluation stages of the project.

Cllr. Jerry Roodhouse, Leader of the Liberal Democrats on the County Council, stated:

"Liberal Democrat national policy is to oppose the building of new incinerators for municipal waste unless they can be shown to be the best environmental option after considering all the alternatives, including new technologies, where waste reduction and re-use are not possible. Our amendment is strictly in line with this policy.

"Today is the start not the end of the decision process. If the government grants the PFI credits, this will provide the finance to build facilities to meet the future needs of Warwickshire. Our amendment should reassure Warwickshire citizens that all technology options remain open, and that we shall be pushing for much more ambitious recycling targets on which to base the final decisions."

Cllr. John Whitehouse, a Liberal Democrat member of the Environment Overview & Scrutiny Committee of the County Council, will propose the Liberal Democrats' amendment at today's Full Council meeting. He said:

"The Government's decision last week, to increase the national CO2 reduction target from 60% to 80% by 2050, makes the case for our amendment even stronger. The current project is based on Warwickshire achieving recycling and composting rates of 52% by 2020, with no further improvements beyond this. With Warwick District already reaching levels of 60% and Stratford likely to follow suit soon, the project targets are simply not ambitious enough, nor do they address adequately the climate change imperatives that we all face.

"Our objective today is to allow the application for PFI credits to go forward to what is a very tight government-imposed timetable, but to establish some very clear and stretching objectives against which the final proposals can be assessed."