Taxpayers left with huge bill for buried rubbish

Last month the Yorkshire Post revealed how councils in the region were casting around for alternatives to burying rubbish in order to avoid the swingeing penalties, which could ultimately lead to council tax increases.

Many authorities have successfully reduced the amount of so-called residual waste which is sent to landfill in recent years, but in 2005/06 the tax stood at £18 a tonne while this financial year the figure is £48 a tonne. It will rise to £80 a tonne by 2014.

Over the past three years alone, Leeds Council has spent £24.9m in landfill taxes, and expects to send 180,000 tonnes of “black bag” waste to local landfill sites this year.

By contrast, Sheffield Council, which has its own incinerator or “energy recovery facility” to burn most of its residual waste, has paid just over £2.8m over the same three-year period and sent just under 27,000 tonnes to landfill last year.

York Council has successfully reduced the amount of waste it sends to be buried from 87,100 tonnes in 2005/2006 to 55,580 tonnes in 2010/11, but because of increases in the tax, has seen its payments rise from £1,567,800 to almost £2.5m.

Incinerators are seen as the way forward by many local authorities including those in North Yorkshire, and yesterday the Yorkshire Post revealed that plans for a controversial multi-million pound plant had been submitted to North Yorkshire County Council.

Plans for a waste treatment plant in South Yorkshire are also advancing, with councils in Barnsley, Doncaster and Rotherham signed up to the so-called BDR waste partnership in a bid to solve their landfill problems.

Earlier this year a firm called 3SE, a partnership between the Milton Keynes-based waste processor Shanks Group and Scottish and Southern Energy, was named as the preferred partner by the three councils.

The company will now move onto a site which has been earmarked for the treatment of waste at Bolton Road, between Boltonupon-Dearne and Manvers, near Rotherham, and apply for planning permission.

At a launch event for the project in July it said it would not build an incinerator, as feared by some protest groups, but instead planned two units, a mechanical biological treatment (MBT) plant and an anaerobic digestion facility.

A planning application is currently being drawn up for the site, with a decision expected in the next few months.