The only TWO options are the SIX options they really considered!

 When are two options not really two options? Well when Derby City Council and Derbyshire County Council are involved it is usually when the councils are claiming to the public there are only two options to be considered for the controversial Sinfin incinerator - the Derby and Derbyshire Waste Treatment Centre on Sinfin Lane in Derby. 

The councils claimed as follows in November 2021.

"Cabinet members at Derby City Council and Derbyshire County Council will be asked to approve a recommendation to develop a business case for the future of the waste treatment facility in Sinfin at their respective Council Cabinet meetings later today.

The business case compares two options:

•            To rectify and use the facility and,

•            To close the facility and dispose of the councils’ waste using a third party.

The business case will be developed over the next few months. Once complete, both councils will reconvene to review and decide how to proceed."

So it was fix it and use it, or dump it. No more than that, no suggestion that there was a raft of alternative options! options that could be considered as an alternative for the site in Sinfin Lane. The reality however was rather different to the picture the councils painted to the public back in November 2021 when they were considering the future of the site. 

Now us mere resident nobodies were excluded from the meetings of the council cabinets and had at the time no access to the cabinet documents or in the case of Derby City also access to the documents provided to the councils Executive Scrutiny Board which met the day before the cabinet meetings in question. Obviously they had nothing to hide being so open and transparent as this - it is perfectly normal to hide all the documents on the subject from residents because come on there are two options being considered, the councils said so and so that must be true right?

WRONG!

 THERE WERE SIX OPTIONS THAT WERE BEING CONSIDERED !

Clearly in the interests of being open and transparent the councils decided to only tell the public they were considering TWO options. Maybe the councils thought that the public could not handle all this information that they would face so wanted to protect the public from this - or maybe they just set out to mislead the public into thinking there were only two options being considered!

As a resident of Derby and also a member of the Sinfin plants Community Liaison Group (CLG) personally I consider that the councils set out to mislead the public when issuing their statements because the councils clearly want to pitch repairing and using the plant - which just so happens to tick all of the boxes in the strategic aims against complete closure which ticked almost none of the boxes. We all know that it is very easy to formulate a set of tests to gain the result you want which in my view is why it was important for the councils to keep the other options hidden from the public because some of them could be considered to be better options in the public eye than the councils want - and obviously that would never do!

A Freedom of Information / Environmental Information request was submitted in November 2021 for the documents from the meeting to Derby City Council. The council managed to fob off my request for far longer than is usually considered acceptable by blaming issues around work levels at the council department in question. Finally they had to issue the documents to me - although in a redacted state there was enough left un redacted for readers to identify that unlike the claimed two options considered there were actually SIX options being considered. Ranging from full repair to closure but also including use of specific sections of the plant to produce refuse derived fuel or to act as a waste transfer site and also even an option considering leasing or selling the site off to a third party.

So what could possibly be the reason for the councils only telling the public there were two options being considered? Surely from past experience they would know that some members of the public would cast their eye over the situation and even make a Freedom Of Information request - FOI or its Environmental brother the EIR. It is not clear why someone somewhere decided to make a public statement that they were to consider two options because surely it would be better to admit to six options while saying two would be considered further. By doing so they would be open and transparent and this would encourage public trust.

So obviously I had to make a request to Derby City Council for the documents from the November 2021 Scrutiny Board meeting and Council Cabinet meetings which took place in an attempt to help the councils to be open and transparent because clearly it is something they struggle with! So that is where it became clear scattered between the heavily redacted texts that there was a broader series of options.

Option ONE was to fix and use the full plant - but on that option the councils redacted all the text relating to RISK 

Being open and transparent the councils clearly have nothing to hide by errr hiding all the risks being considered!

We know that even if "fixed" the inefficient plant which is considered a disposal plant at the bottom of the waste hierarchy will be even worse from an efficiency perspective because the document tells us this!

Also strangely no acknowledgement of fly related issues in the community which vanished when the plant was closed and cleaned.

Option TWO was a secret option ssshhhh dont tell the public! the proposal in this case was to use the front end of the plant which was the Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) and the Mechanical Biological Treatment section (MBT) to create a refuse derived fuel (RDF) to be burnt off site. No acknowledgement of fly related issues on the community which vanished when the plant was closed and cleaned. No reference to odour related objections. 

Option THREE was another secret option ssshhhh dont tell the public! the proposal in this case was to only use the MRF as a "dirty" MRF to extract some recyclables from the waste before shredding the waste and sending it out as an RDF fuel to be burnt off site. No acknowledgement of fly related issues in the community which vanished when the plant was closed and cleaned. Strangely refers to odour issues - which it strangely did not refer to in option two.

Option FOUR was another secret option ssshhhh dont tell the public! the proposal in this case was to use the site as a waste transfer station where the waste would be bulked up and not treated on site before being sent for disposal elsewhere. No acknowledgement of fly related issues in the community which vanished when the plant was closed and cleaned.

Option FIVE is the option of closure of the plant - the residents all time favourite option but sadly it appears not the councils favourite option but one which is a useful tool for pushing through the councils favoured option of fixing and using the plant. This option which almost without fail successfully gives the answer NO to the councils selected strategic aims plays a key part in the councils consideration as it is the only other option they told the public about!

Option SIX was the final ssshhhh secret option dont tell the public! the proposal in this case was to sell or lease the plant to the private market. The document indicates that soft marketing along those lines did not turn up any interested parties in the purchase or lease of the plant.

 Maybe the fact that nobody is interested should be taken on board by the councils when considering if they themselves should attempt to fix and use the plant!

The councils in their documents go on to point score options 1-5 in relation to strategic fit. They do not consider option 6 (sale or lease) as they conclude it is not a likely option - considering no parties came forward via soft marketing.

The point scoring was as follows

We can see from the strategic fit criteria that as expected repair and use is ranked 1st compared to closure as ranked joint 4th.

It is not possible to judge the councils approach to the options financial fit because that section of the documents has a sponsorship deal with a redaction pen company and so it is not possible currently to understand the costs involved in relation to the SIX sorry TWO options the councils told the public they were considering. 

The councils are going through the motions attempting to convince the public they are considering long term closure of the site while running up ever higher multi million pound maintenance bills and considering the out of date plant at the bottom of the waste hierarchy against a joint waste strategy that will be out of date in 2026.

Surely they would not invest heavily in old technology that has been shown to be even less efficient than planned and unable to meet the requirements of the current joint waste contract never mind the expected efficiency you would expect of a future waste strategy that works to head towards net zero! 

©SIMON BACON 2022

 

How much can you spend on a closed waste plant? erm MILLIONS!

 August 2019 was a great month for residents in Derby UK and especially those in the Sinfin, Normanton and Osmaston wards of the city because it was the month the councils of Derby and Derbyshire FINALLY pulled the plug on the controversial waste gasification incineration plant on Sinfin Lane in Sinfin, Derby. Constructed and commissioned by Resource Recovery Solutions Derbyshire Ltd - a joint venture by Renewi and Interserve as part of a long term residual waste contract the wheels fell off the project when the plant never reached the end of commissioning. The councils pulling the plug shortly led to RRS- Resource Recovery Solutions Derbyshire Ltd falling into administration which is where it stays.

Shortly after the plant closed conveniently for some the councils awarded a contract to Renewi UK Services Ltd. This included clearing the Sinfin Lane site of waste, maintaining the equipment on site, organising tests and putting the equipment to bed while keeping the lights on! The stack glows like Mount Doom in the hours of darkness for example. 

One of my previous blog posts places focus on a report from October 2019 in relation to some of the issues with the plant itself which can be read here

  http://derby-waste-a-rubbish-blog.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-sinfin-incinerator-has-more-than.html 

Obviously the works carried out by Renewi UK Services Ltd to clear the site of waste and to then clean down and put the plant to bed was going to cost some money as was carrying out tests on the sites equipment to make judgements on it later. But just how much the councils were going to cough up was not clear so it was time to do some digging. We all like a dig about and why not when its council tax being spent! 

My first investigation was to submit an EIR or to use it's full name a Environmental Information Request to Derby City Council. I dont have a good relationship with the council department that handles such requests as I have now taken them to the Information Commissioner on a number of occasions but in this case they responded pretty clearly.

I asked Derby City Council how much money they had spent on the Derby and Derbyshire Waste Treatment Centre on Sinfin Lane Derby. That is the posh name for the Sinfin incinerator and the requested time period was from closure in August 2019 to the end of September 2021 in an attempt to gather a good two years worth of figures as the plant closed in the August of 2019 there would be some time before costs kicked in.

So what did we learn? Well in that period Derby City Council spent an eye watering £6,211,972 !

That meant I then had to ask the same question to Derbyshire County Council who are in partnership  with Derby City via an Inter Authority Agreement. As part of that agreement all costs are split based on a default allocation. In this case Derby City pays 26.6% of the costs and Derbyshire County Council pays 73.4%. 

So what did we learn from the same question when put to Derbyshire County Council? 

Well we learnt from Derbyshire County Council that in the same period they splashed their council tax payers cash to the tune of £19,623,280 which is an eye watering amount for a waste plant site that is simply being cleared, cleaned, preserved and checked over and part of all that includes keeping the power on - and for anyone that knows the site its lit up like a Christmas tree every night of the year! 

So between them the councils spent in that period £25,835,252 - Nearly £26 MILLION to clean, maintain and keep the lights on at a closed waste facility. So that includes £895,989 spent just on electricity at the site which formed part of the payment to Renewi UK Services Ltd, Renewi formed the bulk of the spend at the site over the period in question. How can you spend close to £26 million in just over two years when your not even fixing the facility?

The councils want us to believe that this large cost will be knocked off the final fair value for the site when they come to an agreement with those with an interest in the site - such as the administrators of Resource Recovery Solutions Derbyshire Ltd and the hedge fund that has now taken on the debt owed to the set of banks that previously funded the actual construction of the waste disposal plant. 

Outside of the council bubble nobody thinks anything will be saved from this long term maintenance when it comes to deciding a fair value, it being all hot air - which being closed is one thing the Sinfin incinerator does not produce - THANKFULLY! 

©SIMON BACON 2022