An environmental campaign group has blasted the financial impact of the Javelin Park incinerator contract and claim it has cost taxpayers £42m over its first five years. Community R4C, a community-owned organisation advocating for lower-cost, environmentally sustainable waste management, claims the Gloucestershire County Council contract with Urbaser Balfour Beatty for incineration has cost taxpayers more than landfill.
In a report published this week they claim that it is set to become even more expensive with the application of UK ETS to incineration from 2028, a form of carbon tax. Using the council’s own data and UK waste treatment benchmarks, Community R4C say their analysis reveals that Gloucestershire’s incinerator gate fees are among the highest in the UK.
Instead of saving £100 million over its lifetime, as the County Council claimed, the incinerator near Quedgeley, which became fully operational in October 2019, has already cost taxpayers £42 million more than landfill over its first five years, Community R4C say. However, Shire Hall chiefs say the incinerator has generated tens of millions of pounds in reserves over the last year which has protected frontline services.
They also say the activists would do well to apologise and pay up the “thousands of pounds” they owe local taxpayers after their claim was kicked out of court in 2020. The report is published on the UK Without Incineration Network (UKWIN) website along with a financial analysis of the contract they have commissioned to corroborate the findings.
UKWIN, a network of anti-incineration campaigners, have previously published data on the environmental impact of incineration and link to the October 2024 BBC report, "Burning rubbish, now the UK’s dirtiest form of power” Tom Jarman, co-founder of Community R4C, said: “This report confirms that the incinerator deal struck by the County Council is a huge financial burden, while being a highly harmful environmental millstone.
“The council continue to claim savings, when in fact the opposite is the case, it is high time for transparency from the council. Underlying costs are higher than any known comparable contract. Anyone would ask: how did the council commit to such a bad deal?
“We must now see changes to the contract and waste management if we are to minimise costs for local taxpayers and achieve net zero ambitions. It is extremely disappointing that members of the council’s cabinet continue to issue misleading claims about the true cost of this contract.
“For example, in response to a formal public question in November 2024 a cabinet member stated that the council did not pay for electricity generated, the same cabinet member has issued claims of the benefit from the spike in energy prices, claiming £15m of ‘benefit to fund important services’.
“As our report shows these claims are incorrect. The council purchases electricity generated by the plant, which it can then resell. The spike in prices also resulted in higher costs to the council for energy used.
“The true net benefit to council budgets of this price spike was just £4.2m in the first five years of the contract, and any benefit will not continue. This benefit is dwarfed by the huge increase in gate fees which the council must now pay.”
Tricia Watson, ex Community R4C director, said the review “totally vindicates” everything they said in their formal objection to the accounts and shows their fears were understated.
“It is shocking to find that our incinerator is probably the most expensive in the country, with costs 50% higher than the landfill it replaced. If only we had had full transparency at the time this huge burden on Gloucestershire taxpayers could have been avoided. We now need to act.”
Community R4C say they have commissioned legal advice on steps the county can take to recover money for Shire Hall from “errant advisers and contractors” and how to minimise forward costs through contract change.
“As a community group working for lower cost and sustainable waste treatment, we are proud to be able to freely share this legal advice with the Council. We are also committed to facilitate expert and community support to dramatically improve the way we manage waste in the county,” he said.
But Conservative Cabinet member David Gray (Winchcombe and Woodmancote) said the decision to invest in Javelin Park was taken over a decade ago. He says it was the right thing to do then and it remains the right decision now as it powers 25,000 homes, recovering metals and building materials and saving the tax payers money.
"Community R4C and Tom Jarman would do well to start by apologising and pay up the thousands of pounds they owe local tax payers following their claim being kicked out of court in 2020 - money they have failed to pay, despite being ordered by the judge to do so,” he said.
"Everyone knows Javelin Park has generated tens of millions of pounds in revenues over the last 18 months, money that has protected front line services and meant we have not had to implement devastating cuts to services like Green-run Bristol City Council - who have a long-term ambition to cut bin collections to just once a month.
"And no one has an alternative suggestion for the disposal of black bin waste. Even R4C proposals planned to burn it as ‘refuse derived fuel’.
"The decision to invest in the incinerator was taken more than a decade ago. It was the right decision then and, with the benefit of hindsight, remains the right decision now, powering 25,000 homes, recovering metals and building materials and saving the tax payers money."
Mr Jarman said Cllr Gray is confusing what he wants the public to think with reality. “As our detailed analysis and independent corroboration shows, the council paid £42m more than landfill over the first five years of the contract.
“The electricity benefit arising from a spike in prices from the war in Ukraine was only a net £4.2m and is a short lived benefit. Our report shows clearly that in the first five years of the contract alone the incinerator has already cost taxpayers £42m and this is set to grow. We must do something to stop this burden on local taxpayers.
“Community R4C have set out a vision for the county which will deliver huge savings and environmental benefits.” Community R4C was established in 2016 as a Community Benefit Society based in Stroud.
It is now an unincorporated association. Community R4C raised £100,000s of community and legal support. It originally aimed to facilitate the building of an alternative waste resource recovery plant - the R4C plant - in co-operation with investors and partners.
Community R4C now advocates a residual waste pre-treatment plant to remove plastics and recyclates from incineration and improvements in waste management.
