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

 

The Sinfin Incinerator has more than a spanner in the works!

 The Derby and Derbyshire Waste Treatment Centre – or the Sinfin Incinerator to Derby residents was built in recent years on Sinfin Lane, Derby UK after a protracted battle by the community starting in 2008/9 to stop the project being built.

The plant was constructed to handle 190,000 tonnes of waste from Derby and Derbyshire as part of a waste contract with RRS (Resource Recovery Solutions Derbyshire Ltd) which was a vehicle for Renewi and Interserve as parent companies. 

The plan was to extract metals and hard plastics for recycling from incoming waste in the MRF (Materials Recovery Facility) although the target rate was less than 10%. The process was then to dry a percentage of the waste in an MBT (Mechanical Biological Treatment) and finally create RDF (Refuse Derived Fuel) which is then burnt (gasified to use the developers term) to produce steam to generate electricity for sale. 

A percentage of the waste when burnt attracts ROC’s (Renewable Obligation Certificates) due to that percentage being biodegradable and so considered renewable.

 The project it has been suggested has cost around £150 million which was funded via a series of banks including the Green Investment Bank. The project was based on Energos incineration technology using a gasification process which it was claimed had long standing operational history in Norway, Energos went into administration part way through the plants construction.

The Environment Agency permit the plant as an incinerator.

With such a large budget and many aspects of the plant being supplied by experienced technology developers and installers overseen by Interserve Construction you would expect a smooth construction and commissioning process. Noting the delay since first planned you would expect the project to develop over time using new designs and technology as it came forward.

The plant through the commissioning process has been a regular blight on the local community creating odour, noise and fly issues which only ended when the facility closed in August 2019.

The liaison group at the plant made up of councillors, resident members and staff from the councils and contractors along with guests such as the Environment Agency and Derbyshire Wildlife Trust sat through meeting after meeting while Interserve and Renewi kept talking about tests being completed etc. The talk was that the plant was weeks away from completing its tests – but it was always just weeks away from completing those tests.

Finally the councils pulled the plug on the contract – before awarding a replacement contract to Renewi – one of the parent companies of RRS who are now employed to clean and maintain the facility while trying to get the councils out of the mess they find themselves in.

The public now have access to the full waste contract and Inter Authority Agreement after the UK Information Commissioner ruled that the contracts should be made public (but that is another story).

 it became clear there was a Service Delivery Plan that was put together around the time that the contract for the plant was terminated. A copy of this has since been provided by the plants liaison group including a faults list put together in October 2019

 22/10/2019

The plants front end is the acceptance pit – where the waste is tipped and then the MRF – Materials Recovery Facility where waste is sorted to extract metals and rigid plastics and also the MBT Mechanical Biological Treatment. This section was the starting point for waste inputs and was the first section to have long term testing as commissioning was taking place.

The report indicates it has not been demonstrated that the front end MRF/MBT can provide enough RDF – Refuse Derived Fuel to maintain performance of the ACT (the three incineration lines). This led to the input pit overflowing delaying delivery of waste to the site – which was seen at times at the site and in the local community.

Cranes in the MBT suffered repeat breakdowns.

MRF multiple breakdowns and blockages including shredder breakdowns.

MRF – Not complying with the agreed facility recycling target with no evidence that acceptance tests can be passed.

MRF target recycling rate was only 7.4% but actual rate was just 4.8% with suggestions that 2019 tests not carried out under normal operational conditions.

MRF recycling purity poor – document suggests the lower the purity the higher performance – not rocket science – shove it through to get material through the process will always lead to poor results.

MRF air knife used for sorting plastics materials for recycling was failing as there were high levels of plastic film in the rigid plastic bales.

ACT (Incineration lines) in previous 12 months only processed 51% of the waste diversion target.

Each of the smoke tube boilers on each of the 3 line plant failed twice in commissioning.

ACT (Incineration lines) overheated when all 3 lines of the plant ran.

ACT (Incineration lines) overheating of CEMS – CEMS is the monitoring. equipment – facility cannot lawfully operate if CEMS is not operational.

ACT (Incineration hall) ambient temperature in the hall caused an unsafe working environment.

Shotball system for cleaning boiler tubes unreliable.

ACT (Incineration lines) numerous valve faults.

Kone Cranes – numerous faults causing unreliable service.

Issues with access for maintenance.

Instrumentation not recording data due to being set to simulation mode.

Alarms incorrectly set and inhibited.

Income from electrical generation significantly lower than base case.

Significant risk that ROCs (Renewable Obligation Certificates) will not be available.

Turbine appears to have a 2MW shortfall in power production compared to that expected from design data.

Turbine and generator cannot be safely lifted or removed.

Syngas analysers that are permanently installed to gather data for ROCs do not work.

Ofgem audit relating to ROCs queries the basis for accreditation.

Odours leading to non-compliance with Environmental Permit and preventing use of onsite offices on welfare grounds.

Bio Filter not preventing odour emissions.

Fugitive emissions from MBT hall detected on Sinfin Lane.

Fugitive emissions from MBT bunker detected in B&Q and Sainsburys.

Fugitive emissions into administration block make offices unusable. When ACT is shut down this includes into the control room.

Carbon Monoxide in ash bunker and basement requires vent system – no scientific or engineering data to back up the design objectives.

Firewalls not completed / certified to allow insurability and comply with fire protection plan.

Excess levels of noise.

Roller doors not safe to operate due to failed components and design defects.

Recycling baler not fastening bales correctly leading to safety issues.

Insufficient documentation to operate the plant safely.

No Final Health and Safety file.

No commissioning records since Sept/Oct 2018.

Licence expired on optical sorters.

Education Centre sprinkler system not installed.

Leachate (liquids from waste) not draining from waste pit.

Corrosion of structural steel in RDF pit.

Electrical Safety – junction boxes not earthed, inadequate labelling.

It is not clear how a project overseen by multiple councils and contractors supported by paid advisors has managed to construct a £150 million white elephant which has now been closed for 18 months.

Councils often say that lessons will be learnt.

 If ever there were lessons councils across the UK should learn from this saga it is do NOT take advice from Derby City and Derbyshire County Council's on waste management! 

©SIMON BACON 2021

Get ya ROCs off!

On April 30th 2018 Resource Recovery Solutions Derbyshire Ltd (RRS) announced that their controversial waste gasification incineration plant had been granted ROCs - Renewable Obligation Certificates for the electrical energy they will produce from the biodegradable aspect of household waste which the plant will take in for burning.

Renewi one of the parent companies of RRS released a press release relating to the granting of ROCs to the Sinfin Lane, Derby project which contain quite a degree of hot air.

They stated that "Up to 98% of the residual waste managed at the facility will be diverted from landfill, which will also generate enough green electricity to power approximately 14,000 homes."

While the plant may generate enough electricity for 14,000 homes - that is yet to be shown one thing is for sure - an unconfirmed percentage of the power generated will come not from so called green electricity - which is considered by the likes of OFGEM as biodegradable wastes being combusted but in fact non biodegradable waste such as plastics - ie fossil fuels.

It is fact (confirmed via FOI/EIR) that in the city of Derby 9,000 properties have no recycling scheme in place - after Derby City Council removed the service stating recycling bin contamination as an excuse.

What this means is that a percentage of waste entering the Sinfin facility will have had no prior recycling applied to it. Paper and card should have been recycled removing it from the residual waste stream entering the Sinfin site in Derby. Instead such material is condemned to be burnt to generate OFGEM funded electricity via ROC payments - ROCs being funded from green charges applied to our energy bills.

Has recycling been removed in the city to procure suitable waste to generate lucrative ROC payments?

Someone called James Priestley said the following-

James Priestley, Managing Director of Renewi’s Municipal Division, said:

 “We are delighted to have been awarded this important ROCs accreditation which is another significant milestone achieved in this project. Not only does this accreditation bring financial support to the project, it also shows how we are using innovative technologies to operate sustainably, divert waste from landfill and create valuable products from waste. We are looking forward to completing the final stages of commissioning and to providing first class, sustainable waste services for the people of Derby and Derbyshire.”

  Now when you use the terms innovative and first class you think ground breaking and efficient and you could be forgiven for thinking this applied in the Derby projects case but the reality is somewhat different.

At the second public inquiry into the project the planning inspector required RRS to provide evidence of their projects energy efficiency status - an important aspect of the project which was a useful insight into the project.

At the second public inquiry RRS were forced to admit that

 in the plants standard electricity only mode their plant was in fact nothing more than what is known as a D10 disposal plant because the energy efficiency status of the process falls below that which would class the plant as an efficient recovery process.

 

To see what the Waste Framework Directive says about a plant being recovery R1 or disposal D10 below is a series of quotes from the directive.

Recovery or disposal – the meaning of R1

47. The Waste Framework Directive (WFD) sets out the waste hierarchy and enshrines it in law. It requires that a waste management route defined as recovery should be used ahead of an alternative that is classified as disposal. Exceptions can be made (see below) but this general principle makes it important to know whether a process is considered recovery or disposal. 

48. Historically the Waste Framework Directives have included annexes which set out lists of what are considered to be recovery or disposal operations. Each is given a number and a letter: R for recovery, D for disposal. In the current directive the classifications of particular relevance to energy from waste are: • R1 – Use principally as a fuel or other means to generate energy • D10 – Incineration on land 

49. What this means is that where waste is burnt as a fuel to generate energy it can potentially be considered a recovery operation (R1) but where the purpose of incineration is to get rid of waste, it is considered D10 and hence disposal.  All municipal waste incinerators were and are deemed as disposal activities (D10) unless and until they are shown to meet the requirements of R1. This is why the term R1 often crops up in the debate about how good an energy from waste plant might be and how it compares to other options. 

50. For municipal solid waste, which includes all the waste collected from households, the EU has gone further by defining what it considers to be sufficient for recovery status under R1. The WFD includes a formula relating to the efficiency of the combustion plant. A municipal waste combustion plant can only be considered to be a recovery operation under R1 if it generates energy and the plant meets the efficiency thresholds calculated using the R1 formula

SO THAT IS THE OFFICIAL BLURB FROM DEFRA ON RECOVERY OR DISPOSAL PLANTS AS GOVERNED BY EU DIRECTIVES - WHICH STILL GOVERN THE UK SINCE BREXIT.

Why are OFGEM supporting inefficient waste gasification incineration plants? the lure of lucrative subsidies in this case in Sinfin Derby has in part led to the route this project has taken which is condemning resources to being burnt for a small amount of energy made financially viable by government subsidy.

OFGEM are rewarding failure.

©SIMON BACON 2018

IT'S GETTING HOT AND STEAMY AT THE SINFIN INCINERATION PLANT

Nine years after the Sinfin incineration plant project became the hottest topic in the

Derby City Council planning department Resource Recovery Solutions or at least one of its parents Interserve have finally struck the match to light up the waste plants burners.
 

Interserve - a major player in construction projects across the UK and a parent of Resource Recovery Solutions (RRS) has been on the ropes in the last year or so as they suffered a number of problems in their energy from waste project portfolio with strong links to the collapse of ENERGOS the incineration technology developers for the Sinfin plant.
 

In the case of the Sinfin project Interserve and Renewi the other parent in this project have relied heavily on the experiences of two other projects in the UK in Milton Keynes and Glasgow which also use Energos technology. In the case of the Glasgow project who also employed Interserve to construct the plant Interserve suffered the ultimate shame of being thrown off the project.

Because of the collapse of ENERGOS and its claimed updated technology contractors have had to work through the plants installation learning from the experiences of the likes of the Milton Keynes facility.

Thank god we were able to delay the plant long enough that ENERGOS collapsed otherwise the Sinfin plant in Derby would already be polluting the city.

 

As it stands the Sinfin project has begun some forms of testing.
 The plant has started accepting waste again which is being converted into refuse derived fuel known as RDF. This "fuel" is currently being exported off site while the incineration section of the plant begins the warm up process so that it is able to be tested before becoming operational later in 2018.

We are told that currently the plant is using its diesel fuelled backup burners to warm the incineration lines up and that steam is being generated for steam blows to clean out the plants systems.

Emissions relating to this have been seen leaving the plants stack in recent weeks as shown below when in the early stages emissions were just a lazy flow.
 

 

As time has passed the plant has vastly ramped up its emissions which included steam being vented at low level from the rear of the plant.

 

 

Things developed further and in recent days the volume of steam being emitted from the rear of the plant around the cooling system reached far beyond what local people expected and in one case someone called the fire brigade thinking that the plant was on fire.

 

 

The plant unlike energy from waste plants in Holland etc has installed a giant cooling plant at the back of the plant to cool the steam produced after it has been used in the plants turbine. In Holland they use that energy in the steam to heat local buildings to get worth from the waste that was burnt. Here in Derby we waste that energy to the atmosphere which is quite shameful and why the plant is considered to be an inefficient D10 waste disposal plant compared to an R1 recovery facility.

 

While the contractor RRS indicates it has notified the fire service and also local businesses it isn't clear what if anything they have done to notify local residents in the likes of Victory Road and Sinfin Lane in relation to the large volume steam vents.

You would expect a contractor working for the local council would show the local community - its neighbours more respect than this.

 

In the coming weeks the plant will be testing its turbine to prove it can generate electricity and this includes providing proof to meet the requirements for ROC accreditation (but that's another story).

Then the contractor has to make the plant run for 25 years successfully - and within 10 working days of handover both the city and county council have to stump up £25 MILLION towards the plant.

 

Locals are steaming about this and the burners have only just been lit!

 

 

 

 ©SIMON BACON 2018

 

 

 

  

Recycling! now is the time to give it back!

My previous blog post placed focus on the two faces of recycling in Derby UK.

On the one hand as Zero Waste Week was taking place the council was using social media to project an image of its recycling success while at the same time hundreds if not thousands of Derby residents in areas such as Normanton and Arboretum ward had had their kerbside recycling service removed a few years back. EIR / FOI data shows there are actually around 9,000 properties without a blue bin recycling service in the city. 

You can read more about the two faces of Derby recycling here-

 http://derby-waste-a-rubbish-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-two-faces-of-recycling-in-derby-uk.html

The importance of recycling cannot be ignored - both from a sustainability aspect and a financial aspect as it is so much cheaper to recycle than to send waste to landfill or incineration.
The removal of recycling in the city was carried out for some questionable reasons in recent years and one thought is that this was an attempt to procure a feedstock for the controversial Sinfin waste gasification incineration plant in the city which is due to start operation soon.
They failed to address recycling contamination issues in those areas, left recycling bins festering for weeks if not months and then claimed contamination was a serious issue.
Contamination IS a serious issue if you do not address the issue!
The councils answer was to remove the service - quite convenient when you need to procure waste to burn!
What happened was they convinced other Derby residents that residents in the areas in question either didn't care or were to stupid to understand how to recycle!
The council was then able to sweep away the blue bin recycling service in many streets even though it was shown via FOI that they had no evidence to justify the service removal when the council targeted my own street - thankfully in my case they did not remove the service.
Replacement bring sites were put in place finally to provide some form of service for those who wanted to recycle.
What they actually did was install prime fly tip hot spots such as this one at Grove Street carpark in the Arboretum ward.

One of the saddest sights I have seen at a recycling site in recent times was a bag of plastic recyclables left at the bring site above which will have had no chance of being recycled because the bins were full and fly tipping surrounded the site.
The fact someone went to this trouble shows people care! The note on the bag says PLASTIC.

 

With the bring sites becoming quite a state 2-3 of the sites were removed by the council - once again condemning residents to having no recycling service.

This prompted me to put a question to the council cabinet member for waste Cllr Asaf Afzal at a recent Full Council meeting in the city regarding bring site provision. 

 

Question from Simon Bacon to Councillor Afzal

The city council removed the bring recycling site on Havelock Road in Normanton due to fly tip issues. This means that local residents have no ability to recycle their rubbish. When will the city council be replacing this bring site with an alternative site in that area of the community?

 

As you have mentioned these sites have attracted fly tipping. The council do not intend to replace any of the bring sites with alternative sites due to the costs and resources needed to maintain them.

From this we can see that the council does not care that their residents have had their ability to recycle removed as it is a case of - no its gone and your not getting it back!

But in recent months the council has done something positive which is to finally listen to local people who pushed for fly tip and wheeled bin enforcement in the city.
Enforcement of the wheeled bins - where residents are issued section 46 notices advising them that they can only have their waste bins in the streets at specific times.
In my view one of the biggest issues with bins on streets is the fact that this led to recycling bins being contaminated - as people passing in the street used them as normal bins for litter or fly tippers made use of the fact they could place whole bags of mixed waste in the bins.

 

So considering that the council now had staff in place to improve the street scene by targeting bins on streets but also importantly that these same staff were engaging with residents what better time could there be to use the enforcement staff to provide information on recycling at the same time they engaged with residents about their bins - an all in one process which would both address bins on streets and recycling contamination issues.

 once carried out in an area it would seem sensible to put back in place the blue bin recycling scheme due to the reduced risk of bin contamination and the fact that recycling is so much cheaper

.

So the question had to be posed!

Question from Simon Bacon to Councillor Afzal

With the successful work being carried out by the councils new Community Protection Officers to remove bins off streets in areas such as Normanton, will the council now return the blue bin recycling service to the streets targeted by the CPOs due to the reduced risk of bin contamination?

The contamination levels of the blue bins were very high. It is the council's intention not to return the blue bin recycling scheme to these areas as it proved expensive to operate and administer.

 

 

What we have is a council that for some reason does not want to recycle! its recycling rate has collapsed in recent years and surely the return of a service taking us back in the right direction - A CHEAPER SERVICE should be the way forward.

©SIMON BACON 2017

The two faces of recycling in Derby UK

The recycling rate for Derby UK in recent years has been pretty dire! since the removal of the free garden and food waste recycling scheme and its replacement with just a simple paid for garden waste scheme the recycling rate went into freefall! pushed on yet further by removal of recycling services completely in some areas of the city due to claims of bin contamination.

When the council caught on to the fact that residents were monitoring the recycling rate via council cabinet documents they promptly removed the data from the council cabinet score cards!

The council is to some degree pegging its hopes on a claimed 7-8% recycling rate at the controversial Sinfin, Derby incineration plant where rigid plastics and metals are to be extracted for recycling before the rest is burnt - but until that site is up and running that material is out of reach.

 

With Recycle Week on the way Derby City Council on social media are putting on a recycling face such as here on Facebook!

 

 

In a similar vein on Twitter they are also putting forward a green front

 

 

With Zero Waste week here the council is also promoting that on Twitter

 

 

Has the council had a road to Damascus change of heart regarding recycling or is it just a cynical ploy to make it look like recycling matters to them?

 

But what are the realities for some residents living in the city?

The council drive to recycle isn't always all it is cracked up to be!

Vast areas of the city had their blue bin recycling scheme removed when the council said residents were contaminating their recycling bins.

 The pitiful replacement bring sites the council has installed have simply become fly tip hotspots.

This site on Havelock Road in Normanton ward rapidly became a fly tip hot spot

 

 

So the council removed it - meaning residents totally lost their ability to recycle -
 NO ALTERNATIVE HAS BEEN PROVIDED.

 



 

On a similar theme at Grove Street in the Arboretum ward the council also installed a fly tip hot spot

and if the council doesn't empty the recycling site when full what message does it send to the public?

 

 

Some residents care enough to gather their plastics and even mark the bags as plastics in a vain hope that what they are taking to the recycling site will be successfully recycled.

 

 

Meanwhile over in Hampden Street, Normanton bin contamination led to rejected bins - but at no point in the six weeks that three blue bins sat festering on the street did the councils bin men tag the bins as contaminated!

 then all of a sudden the bin men emptied two of the bins even though they still contained the same level of contamination that must have led to their rejection.

 

 

So the social media front is of a council looking to promote recycling -

 something that they have not gone out of their way to do in recent times but out on the street residents who feel they have a right to recycle still suffer a 2nd class service with random bring sites that are then either removed or simply not maintained to a high standard.

In some cases residents do not even get a 2nd class service -

 

THEY GET NO SERVICE

 

 

©SIMON BACON 2017

Hidden contracts! the public strikes back!

On 22nd October 2015 I Simon Bacon the writer of this blog applied to Derby City Council in Derby UK via FOI / EIR requesting the following information relating to the controversial joint waste contract linked to the highly controversial Sinfin, Derby gasification incineration plant.

 1- ALL CONTRACTS BETWEEN DERBY CITY COUNCIL AND DERBYSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL RELATING TO THE JOINT WASTE CONTRACT.

 2- ALL CONTRACTS BETWEEN DERBY CITY COUNCIL AND ITS PARTNER DERBYSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL WITH RESOURCE RECOVERY SOLUTIONS (RRS) AND / OR ITS PARENT COMPANY SHANKS / INTERSERVE.

 3- ALL CONTRACTS RELATING TO THE USE OF THE SINFIN TANNERY SITE - OWNED BY DERBY CITY COUNCIL BY RESOURCE RECOVERY SOLUTIONS (RRS) OR OTHER PARTIES.

 Derby City Council responded on 17th December 2015 in which it disclosed some of the requested information but withheld some of the information in part 2 of the request claiming the adverse affect to the confidentiality of commercial information. What was provided was a series of documents with many redacted (blacked out pages) where the council and its supporters - Derbyshire County Council and Resource Recovery Solutions edited the documents to hide certain aspects of the documents which they did not want the public to see.
Here are a couple of examples from schedule 14 of the contract which covers the performance mechanism.

 

As you can see from the images when they redact information they really black it out!

 

I appealed this ruling and Derby City Council carried out an internal review and responded to me on December 24th 2015 that it maintained this position.

Having considered this battle of wills further I made a complaint against Derby City Council on 22nd February 2016 to the ICO - the Information Commissioner. The ICO then gave full consideration to my strongly put appeal while engaging with Derby City Council further.

The council and its fellow contract members attempted to paint a picture which included impacts on interests of Resource Recovery Solutions (RRS) siting that the withheld information included price mechanisms, volume allocations and proprietary contract tools and processes.

The council argued that RRS operated in a competitive waste market and disclosure would allow competitors to work out the deal and how it was structured resulting in a loss of its competitive edge.

The council went on to argue that the Sinfin waste sites novel nature has the capacity to become a "BEACON OF EXCELLENCE"

 

ENERGOS the developer of the incineration equipment being installed into this beacon of excellence had gone into administration in mid July 2016.
 

It was suggested that the competitors of RRS would benefit from the unique know how contained within the information and thus undermine the ability of RRS to utilise this for its own benefit damaging its commercial interests.

Other than the Derby, Glasgow and Milton Keynes projects that have moved ahead there is little evidence of other projects moving forward using such technology and in recent weeks a proposal to install similar tech on the Isle of Wight has been dropped - so not quite the beacon being suggested.

The ICO asked the council to provide a new schedule setting out in each instance the councils rationale for withholding information so that it matched the specific parts of the documents. Having been given further time to do so the council advised it had approached RRS and Derbyshire County Council but that they had declined to provide any further arguments or clarification.
The ICO in their ruling considered that the lack of clarity in the councils submissions suggests that the council either does not properly understand what the effects of disclosure would be or has struggled to meet the evidential and explanatory burden set by the exception.
 

 On 4th August 2016 the Information commissioner at the ICO RULED IN MY FAVOUR instructing Derby City Council to disclose the withheld information to myself as the complainant.

 

In early September 2016 Derby City Council was in no mood to lose their battle again a resident of Derby so instructed its legal team to appeal the ICO ruling and so work started on a legal appeal.

I as the original applicant was also in no mood to lose the battle and so registered as a party to the appeal which WAS set to be heard later in 2017 in London UK. After a delay of a number of months as two similar cases passed through the tribunal system the Derby case began to move forward.

In recent months a similar case relating to an incineration plant in Gloucestershire and its associated contract pretty much ruled in the original applicants favour - while the council in that case attempted to put a brave face on things while putting some spin on the ruling the applicants in Gloucestershire are very happy with the result of their battle. A similar ruling regarding an incineration plant contract in Worcestershire also placed pressure on Derby City Council who were then set a date by the General Regulatory Chamber who were running the appeal by Derby City Council where the council had to acknowledge if it proposed to continue with their appeal.

So two other appeals went against the local councils which forced Derby City Council into a corner over their appeal against the ICO ruling.

 Did they continue or did they rollover!

 

THEY ROLLED OVER AND BAILED OUT OF THEIR APPEAL ON MAY 11TH 2017

The councils legal team made the following statements when terminating the councils appeal.
"

"Our clients have been carrying out a fresh, detailed, careful and considered review of the disputed information with all interested parties taking into account the passage of time and developments since the initial request and the commencement of the Appeal.

Having concluded that reassessment and made recommendations accordingly, the interested parties have respectively reached agreed conclusions and advised the relevant public authority which has been able to make an updated decision on disclosure as a result.
Our clients have invested a great deal of time in reaching this decision and it is not one that has been taken lightly. Despite considering that much of the disputed information remains commercially sensitive and confidential, given the time that has now passed since the original request for information by the applicant and taking into consideration the current stage the facilities are now at, the likelihood of probable harm from disclosure of the disputed information into the public domain has reduced.
As a result our clients have asked us to confirm that the disputed information will be disclosed in its entirety. "
 

 Derby City Council admitted at a recent full council meeting that they and their supporters - Derbyshire County Council and RRS / SHANKS had already spent £20,000 on their fight to keep aspects of the Derby and Derbyshire waste contract secret - hidden away from the public. In a strange twist they appeared to be suggesting to the local newspaper the Derby Telegraph that they had NOT paid £20,000 to stop me from gaining a copy of the contracts as reported here http://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/derby-man-wins-right-to-see-controversial-sinfin-incinerator-contract-but-council-to-appeal/story-30288364-detail/story.html

 

The council was simply playing with words - £20,000 was spent but the city council only paid a third of the payment!

What are they trying to hide from the residents of Derby and Derbyshire ? what is so controversial that they redact whole pages of their waste contract ?  In these times of austerity and government cuts surely the public have a right to know what their taxes are being spent on.

NOW WE HAVE THE CHANCE TO FIND OUT!

©SIMON BACON 2017