Proposals for Kirkstall transfer station ‘not value for money’

Kirkstall should not be the home of a dedicated transfer site for Leeds’ new waste treatment facility, according to a recommendation being put to councillors.

Officials assessing bids by contractors looking to run the treatment facility for the city’s non-recycled waste are recommending to Leeds City Council’s Executive Board that plans to develop the Kirkstall waste site to include a dedicated transfer station are not good value for money and should be dropped.

The existing facility on Evanston Avenue, off Kirkstall Road, is currently a Household Waste Sorting Site as well as a transfer site for a range of recyclable materials and other specialist wastes.

Expanding the site to include a transfer station had been considered to provide another point for the delivery of black bin waste collected from households before being sent to the main treatment facility in east Leeds.

However, an independent analysis of the costs of redeveloping the site showed doing so did not represent good value for money and most of the city’s waste is already delivered directly to the Skelton Grange landfill site in south east Leeds, in close proximity to the two possible sites for the proposed treatment facility.

The Kirkstall site will, however, continue to receive waste and act as a sorting site for household waste. It currently handles around 26,000 tonnes a year

Councillor James Monaghan, Leeds City Council’s executive board member for environmental services, said:

“We have been able to look at the costs quoted by contractors in the running to develop the waste treatment facility and we can see it just wouldn’t be good value for money to put a further dedicated transfer station at Kirkstall.

“The process of finding a way to deal with our non-recyclable waste has been open to a whole range of different options that we have to examine one-by-one, from different sites to different kinds of technology.

“This is just one option we have looked at and rejected as not value for money.”

Notes for editors:

In April 2008 the council secured PFI credits worth £68.9million from the government towards the development of a waste treatment facility.

A part of the related approval process, the council identified the former wholesale market site in the Cross Green industrial estate as the ‘reference’ site for the main treatment facility and the Kirkstall site as the transfer station location.

However the council has made clear that it has no preference for a particular site or technology, and has designed the procurement to enable a range of different sites and technology options to come forward from bidders.

The programme for the project is likely to be that procurement, which began July 2008, will see a contract awarded in around March 2011. It is anticipated that planning permission for the treatment facility will be submittted, by the contractor in March 2011, which will require consultation with local communities, and a detailed Environmental Impact Assessment. Construction and commissioning will take place between 2012 and 2014. It is anticipated that the technology will become operational during 2014.

ENDS
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Michael Molcher, Leeds City Council (0113) 224 3937
e-mail: michael.molcher@leeds.gov.uk