Council's forced U-turn on transport of rubbish

EXCLUSIVE by DOUGLAS SHEPHERD

Councillors in the Scottish Borders were advised six years ago that dealing with the region's household rubbish locally represented better value than hauling vast quantities of waste to distant locations for treatment.

But following this week's revelation that 10,000 tonnes of Borders 'blue bin' recyclables will be shipped to Ulster each year for sorting alongside the 2019 decision to haul 42,000 tonnes of residual (black bag) garbage by road to a facility in central Scotland, the 2015 advice has been well and truly turned on its head.

Scottish Borders Council's entire strategy for handling waste had to be completely reassessed following the catastrophic collapse of a 24-year £80 million treatment contract with the now defunct New Earth Solutions Group [NESG] in 2015. The deal had included the planned construction of a £23 million state of the art treatment centre at Easter Langlee, Galashiels.

But the council contractor's inappropriately named NEAT technology could not be made to function in time to allow SBC to comply with Scotland's prohibition of untreated waste going to landfill. To compound matters the debt-ridden NESG was unable to source the money for the Easter Langlee facility.

When the council sensibly abandoned their partnership with NESG in February 2015 much of the background which led to the decision, and reports and correspondence linked to the contract's issues and failures were buried under a six-year confidentiality agreement signed by the parties at the time of termination.

But following the expiry of that agreement earlier this year SBC has been asked via a Freedom of Information request to release copies of the confidential and sensitive documentation so far hidden from public scrutiny.

Among the minutes and reports so far provided by the council is a copy of the 18-page private report submitted to councillors back in early 2015 after it became clear the deal with NESG was doomed.

The report from Project Management Team Leader Ewan Doyle traces the four-year saga of SBC/NESG with the recommendation to pull the plug on the entire venture which cost taxpayers at least £2.4 million.

However, the report  explains that in 2014 the project team commenced the consideration of alternative options to evaluate whether there were viable alternative solutions if NES failed to provide a satisfactory way forward, or decided to walk away from the contract. 

"As part of the consideration of alternative options, the project team developed several solutions that demonstrated that it is better value to treat waste in the Scottish Borders and “offtake” the products produced than to transport large volumes of untreated waste out of the Scottish Borders for treatment."

The alternative solution analysis demonstrated that it would take four years to deliver a waste treatment solution by the Council. But the time allowed for NES to deliver the waste treatment facility had already been extended with a six month moratorium handed to the company to see if it could overcome its major technical and financial difficulties.

By this stage time was not on the council's side. 

The first legislative date and target that the Council had to meet was to treat black bin waste before any residues could go to landfill was January 2021, with the introduction of biodegradable waste restrictions to landfill as required by the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012.

In the end SBC had no alternative but to resort to road haulage to solve its waste disposal problems in time to meet the deadline.

We hope to feature further disclosures from the confidential files in the coming weeks.