Issue - meetings

That the report be noted.

The Chief Executive presented the report to seek Members’ views on the appointment of a Preferred Bidder and to set out the stages leading to Financial Close and the award of a contract on the North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Project (NWRWTP) of which Flintshire was the lead Authority.  The officers present included the Director of Environment who represented Flintshire on the project and also the Head of Finance as Section 151 officer, the Head of Legal & Democratic Services as Monitoring Officer and the Internal Audit Manager who undertook Internal Audit work on the project on behalf of all five Councils.  Whilst it was felt important to provide an overview in the first two reports on the agenda, more commercially sensitive detail on the evaluation of the final tender was included in the final report and would therefore need to be considered in private session.

The key points of the presentation were:

§         Scope of Project

§         Latest Progress Update

§         Project Stages

§         Community Benefit Scheme

§         Partnership Management: Transfer Station Network

The Chief Executive explained that the two principal issues were (1) to consider whether the tender sufficiently demonstrated value for money in a workable solution and (2) to seek support on the Second Inter-Authority Agreement which represented a five-way binding agreement from a single client.  The aim was to provide an environmental solution for waste to avoid the continued use of landfill sites.  A funding commitment for the term of the contract had been secured from Welsh Government (WG) once the contract had been awarded, following agreement from all five partner Councils.

In response to a recent press article on the tender process, the Chief Executive pointed out that the project had attracted some major international bidders and that all but two had been de-selected: Sita UK Ltd and Wheelabrator Technologies Incorporated (WTI) which were closely matched at that stage.  Following the withdrawal of Sita from the process due to commercial reasons, WTI had been recommended as the Preferred Bidder with assurance given that there would be no difference in the quality of outcomes.  Intensive negotiations by the Council’s officers had resulted in agreement by all five partner Councils of £180K per annum of community benefits to be used for community/education projects in Deeside, which was thought to be the largest such sum for this size of project.

The Director of Environment provided explanation on the decision for partner Councils to ‘self manage’ the transfer station network which was outside the contract, as previously reported to the Committee.  This cost sharing between the partnership together with the subsidy commitment from WG would result in £50K per annum benefit to the Council.

On the decision to use road as the means of transporting waste to the facility, Councillor Ian Dunbar raised concerns about heavy vehicles using roads in the local towns which may be further affected by any closures to the Flintshire bridge.

The Chief Executive pointed out that the bridge was infrequently closed due to periods of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 65