I attended a workshop hosted by Civic Voice and as a result have joined a Peterborough “Asset of Community Value” group founded at the workshop. The workshop explained how an “asset of community value” can be registered with the local council and what that means should it be or become threatened. The rules were explained and what and what was not eligible.
The new group is not a “political” group in that peoples’ views on the legislation may be strong, but those views are not the point. I would describe this as a “technical” alliance between people prepared to share knowledge and help people in Peterborough who want to do this. I was quite shocked to learn that Peterborough has only registered two Assets of Community Value (the Green Backyard and the Football Ground) whereas Chelmsford identified seventy which needed to be registered.
What about the Lido? We need a little list.
Railworld, Peterborough
Cllr Andy Coles acted as spokesperson for the Peterborough group at the workshop and he was an obvious elected councillor lead. For those who don’t know him he is a keen supporter of The Green Backyard and used to be its beekeeper. He has also supported the parishing of Westwood (a project currently in abeyance, but which I strongly support) and he currently holds the council’s “community” brief.
Alun Williams volunteered to look after the membership.
Today I wrote in the following terms to my ward councillors, copying in my MP.
mass burn incinerator for household waste
I invite your comments on how you have protected the interests of the residents of my ward and of the city in the years since 2007 in this matter.
Should the council reconsider what it is doing: What would the costs of pulling out of this contract be today? And tomorrow (assuming it is signed tomorrow)?
Have you checked whether or not the council considered options other than incineration? What evidence of careful consideration of other options are you relying on? Are you aware that the council has been consistently challenged on this since 2007, (and possibly earlier)?
Are you aware that the business cases for incineration in general and for this particular incinerator are both now being challenged as unsafe (the economy and the market having changed substantially)? Have you considered the financial impact on council tax payers should these cautions turn out to be well founded? And that if the business performs as badly as expected are you aware of the likely impact on recycling, too?
Has the contract been set up in such a way that it can attract structural or grant funding? Or has it been set up in such a way that it is ineligible?
Are you aware of the total cost of this contract? Figures of £76M and £80M have been quoted recently in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph for the capital costs alone. Is that figure current? What are the overall 30 year costs for this project? Is it acceptable that this information is still not in the public domain? Is it acceptable that innocent readers of their local paper might assume that this figure is the total cost of the project?
Are you aware that the council is deliberately choosing out of date technology and describing it as “tried and tested”? (the information on technology is still not in the public domain).
Are you aware that the council might be comparing the energy recovery of its own plant with Scandinavian examples? If so are you aware that in Scandinavia (which is used to colder weather and historically much more aware of the importance of insulation and energy security) high performance hot water supply grids are planned in (eg for swimming pools or district heating). Peterborough has not planned a supply grid and has not explained who will buy energy and power generated by this incinerator. Have you seen an example of the output and recovery figures from either Peterborough’s as planned and have you compared that with an operational equivalent in Scandinavia and an operational equivalent in the UK (local campaigners are finding that those in the UK can’t sell their power).
Are you aware that the UK’s statutory regulatory regime for air pollution (in which the council has placed its trust) is widely regarded as unfit for purpose? The Health Protection Agency is about to undertake research into whether or not it can substantiate the assurances and claims it has been making and upon which the Environment Agency and numerous councils have historically relied. Is the council aware of the potential damage it could do to its own Environment Capital “aspiration” if, as widely expected, it can’t?
Do you know enough about air pollution and monitoring in the city? Does Peterborough monitor anything other than road traffic? Where are the monitoring stations and are they in the right places? What regime is planned for when the incinerator is operational?
Have you considered the social, health and cost impacts on the city of a mass burn incinerator in an area with very high (and rising) levels of social deprivation?
Are you aware that a new incinerator on an industrial site in Fletton is operating and is apparently making people ill, but that the council has not done anything about it, and that not one person amongst the “officers’ panel” and members present at the Sustainable Growth and Environment Capital Scrutiny Committee Call in Meeting on 29th August was equipped to advise the ward councillor who asked about this problem in his ward? I understand that the ward councillor had been told by the Environment Agency that it was a matter for the council. As a member of the public I witnessed that not a single person actually knew how to deal with this relatively small problem – nobody offered to look into it or explain who the ward councillor should talk to, if it wasn’t the Environment Agency. This is despite the presence of senior council officers and (at least) three lawyers.
Are you satisfied with the monitoring and regulation of pollution in the city?
Can you write NONE against – or otherwise provide detail of any personal, family or party interest you have had, have or are likely to have – in any of the following:
A meeting of a committee with a very long name: Sustainable Growth and Environment Capital Scrutiny Committee held on Wednesday 13th June, 2012 at 7.00 pm Bourges Viersen Room, Town Hall. may turn out to be the last committee able to interrogate or discuss Peterborough City Council’s plans to build an incinerator, a so-called “Energy from Waste (EfW) plant” before an executive decision is taken by the deputy leader in consultation with the Waste 2020 Project Board (whose recommendations and minutes I believe are not published – please put a link in a comment if you find them!). If this committee does not “call-in” the decision the council is expected to proceed with incineration plans which still can’t be examined by the public.
Documents showing council’s current thinking and a brief history of its proposal for an EfW plant has been circulated to councillors. These documents reveal that fears which have often been expressed about the city’s recycling (how it does it and how much it does) and even bigger worries about incineration replacing recycling could well be justified.
“In accordance with Standing Orders, Members are asked to determinewhether the update report to be tabled at the meeting relating to agenda item 5. Waste 2020 Programme – Energy From Waste Facility which contains exempt appendices containing information relating to the financial or business affairs of a particular person (including the authority holding that information), as defined by Paragraph 3 of Schedule 12A of Part 1 of the Local Government Act 1972, should be exempt and the press and public excluded from the meeting when these appendices are discussed or whether the public interest in disclosing this information outweighs the public interest in maintaining the exemption.”
I asked from the public seating area that members be given the opportunity to vote on excluding members of the public because the chair seemed to be telling us to leave at the outset of ITEM 5 and without any vote. They were then allowed to vote. The chair also had to be persuaded by council officers that part of ITEM 5 could be discussed in public and that the exclusion could follow discussion of that part rather than apply to the whole item.
However no discussion took place in this committee on the relative merits of the “public interest in disclosing” as opposed to the “public interest in maintaining the exemption” and it was not clear to me that members of the committee understood that standing orders provided them with an opportunity to debate the relative pros and cons of sharing the information with the public. The chair of the committee refused to let me raise this.
The public interest in disclosing is overwhelming in my view. I believe that this committee was led by its chair into a breach of its own standing orders by not having any debate about where the balance of public interest lay: whether it was better for the city to have disclosure or not. Members of the committee were simply not asked to contribute their thoughts on the subject or debate it before they were asked to vote.
For some members of the newly formed opposition (Independent/Labour) this was their first time sitting on this committee. I don’t know how they felt but I was in a state of mild shock by the time we were thrown out.
Peterborough City Council’s call-in procedure
requires two members of a scrutiny committee to complete a form explaining the reasons for a call-in (eg failure to follow due process). The affected committee (the one within whose remit the decision takes place) then has to meet within 10 days to uphold the call-in or recommend action.
