Horrors of SERC

It's three years since the Localism Bill was proudly unveiled by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles. It would, he said

“herald a ground-breaking shift in power to councils and communities overturning decades of central government control and starting a new era of people power “ . 

There was a lot more of the same sort of populist guff....

Six months earlier, South Glos councillors had turned down an application from SITA to build an incinerator – sorry, waste-to-energy facility – sorry, Severnside Energy Recovery Centre - at Hallen, three miles north of Avonmouth. It was much more than a NIMBY decision; the area was already overcommitted to waste treatment plant over and above the local need, and the West of England councils were committed to a 'dispersal' strategy to reduce distances that waste must be carried . [Since then, our councils, with that unlikely Local Hero Gary Hopkins at the fore, have abandoned incineration altogether and gone for more advanced technology, along with then innovative food waste colections which are both proving themselves well . Gary survived the Evening Post vilification treatment. Lets hope Daniella Radice is equally resilient ].

But SITA now saw a commercial opportunity to burn as much as half the industrial and commercial waste produced in the West of England area. They appealed to the Secretary of State against the South Glos. decision. In 2011 there was a planning inquiry, at which Mr Pickles' Inspector took the SITA side. Pickles duly overturned the local councillors' decision. So SITA got their permission, but, in the absence of the local customers they'd described in their appeal, they still had nothing to give investors the confidence to put up the cash.

Incinerators need an assured flow of waste to burn – so the operators build in contract terms so that their customers must pay dearly for any shortfall in supply. Who cares that that obstructs any new measures to reduce waste or divert materials for recycling? If local authorities, desperate to avoid landfill taxes, commit to paying out £1.4 billion to burn waste by open combustion in an incinerator for 25 years; well, it's a proven if primitive technology, and financiers are keen to put up the capital with such low risks and high prospective profits. That's the theory.

Having had no more luck selling disposal contracts to local businesses than it had with the West of England local authorities, SITA cast its net wider. In west London it found a consortium of 6 underperforming and unambitious boroughs that were still sending high levels of waste to landfill, and were pretty low down the recycling tables. A deal was done. The incinerator would be built at Hallen as that champion of localisation, Pickles, had ruled; the waste to feed it would now come from the bins of Ealing, Brent, Hounslow, Richmond, Harrow, and Hillingdon.

Of the incinerator outputs, some would be the stack emissions, mostly drifting across North Bristol; some would be 'bottom ash'; some would be highly hazardous fly ash. Some of the heat would generate electricity for the grid, but unless neighbouring customers could be found for the bulk of the waste heat, that would just be dissipated to atmosphere.

Even given the deal, the promise of a cast iron long-term contract, and the profits and low risks that go with it, it seems that investors still didn't exactly queue up waving their cheque books.

Enter the Green Investment Bank. Set up about the same time as Pickles was banging on about the virtues of small government and local decision making, the GIB is supposed dip into its £3.8 billion to back 'green' projects in offshore wind, energy efficiency (especially the 'green deal') , or waste reduction/treatment where its “capital, knowledge and reputation make the difference that enables a project to be successfully financed“.

The GIB must be struggling, what with investors pulling out of offshore wind and the controversy over the big energy companies 'taxing' consumers with what Cameron reportedly dismisses as 'green crap'. It's been putting money into such bizarrely ungreen projects as converting Drax from coal to biomass – wood pellets imported from the forest clearance in the USA. Apparently that's a net reduction in local CO2 emissions, so it qualifies.

At Hallen, the GIB has put £20 million into SERC. As their press release put it, “GIB will invest £20 million of the senior debt alongside a lending club of Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Mizuho Bank. Equity will be provided by SITA UK, Japan's ITOCHU Corporation and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership.”

Thanks to them, and Mr “where there's muck there's brass” Pickles, household waste with plenty of recyclable materials still in it will be rail freighted from London to be burned here, in an area where our more progressive local authories have already found ways to recycle more, to pollute less, and to keep it local.

Happy Christmas.

Artful Dodgers - how to bypass the local planning system.

No, this isn't about the Mem or Sainsburys. Strictly speaking, it's not even about Bristol, because the site is just 'over the border' in BaNES.

It's the three fields that lie between Stockwood and Whitchurch village. Normally used for grazing ponies, and criss-crossed by footpaths, the fields were bought a few years back by Robert Hitchins Ltd, a Cheltenham based developer specialising in commercial business parks.

Hitchins' ambitions for the three fields are a bit different, though. Up to 295 houses, pretty much filling up the remaining Green Belt open space between the two settlements. No shops, no schools, no health centre, no....... anything, really. Just an estate.

Twice they've put in planning applications to Bath and North East Somerset's development control committee. Twice, they've been unequivocally turned down, because their proposals break most of the rules in the planning book.

Now they're trying a new approach. They're appealing to the Planning Inspectorate against the most recent refusal, in the hope that Mr Pickles will override the considered views of local residents and councillors. But at the same time they're introducing a slightly scaled-down alternative version of the original proposal – with 200 houses instead of 295.

We have the opportunity to comment on this 'reduced' scheme – or at least, on the summary diagram that seems to provide the sole documentary foundation for it

But this version will skip the local scrutiny that was enough to see off the original plan. Instead, it will be for the government Planning Inspector to look at the evidence and make a recommendation to the boss – Eric Pickles, Localisation Hero.

Smart, eh?

The Planning Enquiry is expected next month. Deadline for comments is 15^th September.

[added 19th Sept]   The public inquiry is scheduled for 22nd October, 10am, at the Bath City F.C. ground, Twerton Park BA2 1DB

Me and Eric - Localists

The last couple of days I've spent an hour or three outside the local shops with clipboard and a petition. The idea is to get enough signatures to force a council debate about their plans to sell off public open spaces, including several local ones (I could see two from the shops, with children making good use of them in the sunshine). What's more, I could tell the shoppers that it's a joint project by the Labour, Conservative, and Green Parties. That's a first! People are very keen to sign. People power in action.

Meanwhile, in Whitehall, Community Secretary Eric Pickles was doing his own bit to promote the small government, pro-localism agenda. Except he didn't. Instead he gave his blessing to plans to burn food (palm oil) grown in Asia as fuel in an Avonmouth power station to provide electricity in Britain - overriding a decision by our own city council a year ago.

Hidden in that bad news for localism and for global food supplies, though, there's a crumb of comfort. The inspector who heard the appeal from would be plant-builders W4B had already rejected the city council's contention that wider issues of sustainability are a material planning consideration. In short, if it does no damage to Bristol's rainforests, only to those in S.E. Asia, we shouldn't let it worry us.

Maybe the inspectorate - or even Eric - had a change of heart. There are conditions in the final permission that 'any bioliquids burnt in the main boiler shall satisfy the sustainability criteria' . That means compliance with the EU's 'Renewable Directive' on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources, particularly those sections relating to the sustainability of bioliquids. There's a requirement that the company report to the council annually on how it complies.

All of which suggests that the council was right to raise global sustainability as a legitimate reason for turning the original application down.

There's lots more, plus plenty of well-informed comment, in a Guardian piece by George Monbiot . Neil Harrison's been blogging about it too - on much the same lines as this piece.

How Eric Pickles puts a squeeze on buses

[picture thanks to politics.co.uk via Mabinogogiblog ]

A copy of 'In Touch' drops through the letterbox. This one turns out to be seriously out of touch. Apart from the routine photos of glum councillors, it leads me optimistically to their website, wondering if our Stockwood councillors have at last launched some kind of an online dialogue with their constituents.

Sadly, No. The link takes me to the Bristol and South Glos Conservative website. Click on 'News' for the very latest - and there's a South Glos Tories' press release complaining at the "absolutely outrageous" Govt cut in bus subsidy.

But the Govt is a Labour government, and the date is February of last year. There's been no news since then. Still, it remains topical.

The bus subsidy is again being cut. One pledge this 'greenest government ever' is keeping is to protect the concessionary bus pass scheme introduced by Labour. Meaning it's making the same demands of councils and bus companies, but cutting the funding.

The impact is inevitable, and it will affect passengers of all ages. Councils, faced with less money and more costs across all their services, are having to cut the payment they make to the bus companies for every concessionary journey. Bus company income drops, and some journeys no longer generate the revenue to cover costs. Result - service withdrawn. It's already happening in South Glos, where the payment is to drop from 97p to 82p - about 15%.

Expect a wave of bus service withdrawals. But don't expect the Tories to make much of a fuss.