Why Sinfin waste plant report is being kept secret
A protest against the plans is scheduled on the steps of the Council House the council
Last updated 2nd Feb 2023
A published report about the future of the controversial Sinfin waste plant is to stay private because making it public now would harm the council’s “commercial interests”.
Cabinet members are to meet at Derby City Council HQ this afternoon (Thursday, February 2) to discuss the costly waste incinerator – but the press and public won’t be allowed in to listen to the contents of the document. The “secrecy” of the details has angered several councillors.
Indeed, there is so much anger and uncertainty that a protest rally is scheduled before the meeting starts. Campaigners against the possibility of the waste plant reopening – believed to have cost the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds – will make their feelings heard from 3pm on the steps of the Council House in the city centre.
A business case for opening the plant or closing it for good was promised “within a few months” back in November 2021. But it will finally come to the table and be discussed later today (Thursday).
Once completed, the Sinfin waste plant was intended to divert 190,000 tonnes of rubbish per year away from expensive landfill by heat-treating it to produce a gas, which it would then burn to create enough electricity to power 14,000 homes. However, it became apparent that this was not possible and the plant was mothballed in 2019 before it could come into use.
It was being developed by Resource Recovery Solutions (RRS) – a joint venture of construction firm Interserve and waste management company Renewi – which is currently maintaining the plant on behalf of Derby City Council and Derbyshire County Council. Since then it has cost taxpayers across Derbyshire £34.5 million – just over £8 million of that has been paid by Derby City Council and the remaining £26 million by Derbyshire County Council for the maintenance activities by Renewi at the Sinfin Lane site.
Campaigners against the waste plant fear its reopening will “inflict Sinfin and Normanton with noise, smell and flies once again”. That’s the message from worried Sinfin councillor Nadine Peatfield.
Unless something very unusual happens, the city council will use its powers to exclude press and the public from hearing the contents of the meeting, scheduled to start at 4pm.
On Wednesday night the city council’s executive scrutiny board “reluctantly” excluded the press and public to discuss the report ahead of Thursday’s cabinet meeting.
Before the press and public were excluded the council’s monitoring officer Emily Feenan explained why the report is, so far, private business.
She said: “Having consulted with our advisers who have been key in drafting this report and the documents which accompany it, I have reached the conclusion that the risk to the council posed by disclosure of this report and its contents outweighs the benefit of disclosure at this current time. I appreciate that is frustrating for members.
“As the monitoring officer I have considered this report carefully. I am of the view and will advise members that to discuss the contents of the report in the open session will damage the council’s commercial confidentiality – its interests – in this report.”
Ms Feenan then added that no “public” information was made available because it was felt that with so many limitations on what to say readers would not be able to understand the context properly. Therefore, it was not possible to produce a report for the public. This led to criticism.
Chair of the scrutiny board Councillor Martin Repton said: “I hope that senior officers will understand that we (scrutiny board) feel this is a rubber stamping exercise and we are not being able to give it proper scrutiny. We’ve got two political groups tonight who are not in attendance (Conservatives and Reform Derby). Is that because they don’t want to be associated with the secrecy or is it because they know it will just be passed through and go to cabinet without proper scrutiny?”
Councillor John Whitby said: “I appreciate the report as it is and there’s lots of confidential information, so I suppose it has to be held in private. But why isn’t there a part that can be sanitised or whatever and give a report the press and public could have access to? It just seems like complete secrecy.”
And Councillor Hardyal Dhindsa said: “Not to have anything in the public domain doesn’t feel right and we need to find a way of doing that. What could we have done to make it a public information paper rather than doing it behind closed doors?”