Tockwith residents are doubtless still celebrating North Yorkshire County Council’s decision yesterday to reject BCB Environmental’s proposed £24m energy-from-waste plant at Marston Business Park, just outside the village near York.  But other North Yorkshire taxpayers should be feeling very angry. For two reasons.

First, the Government has imposed on all local authorities the obligation to reduce dramatically the amount of waste it sends to landfill.  Failure to meet these targets will result in huge fines – quite apart from the soaring cost of landfill tax.  At present, the best councils manage to recycle about 40 per cent of household waste.  That leaves a huge shortfall, which the proposed BCB plant – which would have been capable of processing 60,000 tonnes of waste a year – would have significantly reduced. 

Second,  BCB is now likely to appeal against this decision and, given that it meets all the criteria laid down by the Environment Agency and will produce 10,000KWh of sustainable electricity (hello? has anyone noticed that this is an issue?), stands a good chance of being ultimately approved. At which point, North Yorkshire taxpayers will have to foot the bill for costs.

So the poor, long-suffering mugs who pay their council taxes to North Yorkshire County Council will face a huge bill one way or the other – either for failure to reduce the amount of waste landfilled or for the costs of fighting the appeal.  And all because councillors were running scared of a few hundred residents who mounted an irresponsible over-hyped campaign.

Incidentally, I’m happy to declare an interest in this, having handled the media relations for BCB’s proposal for the past couple of years.   And I look forward to announcing the result of a successful appeal, if that is what BCB’s board decides to do.

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