£200m contracts awarded to deal with waste

“Residual” household waste from Hull will be taken to the world’s largest advanced gasification energy-from-waste plant on Teesside.

Waste from the East Riding will go to a similar plant being constructed at Ferrybridge by Spanish-owned FCC Environment – previously called Waste Recycling Group, which was behind contentious plans for an incinerator at Saltend, near Hull. The plans were finally dropped three years ago.

FCC Environment will continue to run the councils’ 13 household waste and recycling sites. In all, four companies will manage the recycling and waste collected from 263,000 households and will oversee the 13 household waste and recycling sites provided by the councils. There is a concerted effort to boost recycling and the rate is currently at about 57 per cent in the East Riding and 52 per cent in Hull.

Meanwhile, in North Yorkshire, an MP has backed moves by councillors to set up a new working party to examine the need for a waste incinerator at Allerton Park near Knaresborough.

The joint venture between York and North Yorkshire County Council was thrown into doubt last year when the Government withdrew its financial support. A final decision on whether to press ahead is expected to be taken later this year.

The Tory MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, Andrew Jones, said: “PFI funding has gone, the landfill tax has not increased at anything like the rate predicted and the project is still not ready to begin. It is clear that the financial backdrop to this project is now completely changed on what it was several years ago.”