Procurement of new waste treatment facilities

Plans for a multi-million pound waste treatment plant in Leicestershire have been halted following the impact of the loss of Government funding support.

The loss of £86.6million of PFI credits has made the project unaffordable.

The Council had been working with bidders to create a new facility which would deal with up to 180,000 tonnes of household waste annually and would open in 2015.

However, following the government spending review, the withdrawal of funding, plus proposed changes in national waste policy, means that it now makes more sense to explore alternative methods.

Leicestershire has one of the best recycling rates in the country – the county was ranked the top county partnership for the second year running in 2009/10 with 52.6%.

Leicestershire is on track to meet next year's landfill diversion target and will always strive to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible.

The County Council was awarded £86.6m of Private Finance Initiative credits in October 2008 and began its procurement process the following month.

The Private Finance Initiative is a government scheme allowing local authorities to buy a service from a private sector company, rather than borrow money to build and operate its own facilities.

The final two bidders (Osiris Consortium and Veolia)  were shortlisted in June 2010 to bid for the contract to provide new waste treatment facilities.

The government withdrew the PFI credits in October 2010 as part of its Comprehensive Spending Review.

In June 2011, the government announced the outcome of its national waste policy review which includes an intention to remove the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme (LATS) beyond 2012/13, meaning that local authorities will no longer need to meet any specific landfill diversion targets until 2019/20 .

As part of the procurement process, the County Council made two sites available to bidders at Bardon and Whetstone  .  It is now proposed that the land at Bardon is sold in due course.

       Help with file formats used on this website