New leaked incinerator document reveals more crippling costs for local taxpayers

10.00.00am GMT Tue 17th Feb 2009

The cost of the Newhaven incinerator to local taxpayers has risen again.

Local taxpayers in East Sussex and Brighton and Hove face enormously rising costs over a 50 year period to pay for the hated incinerator now being built in Newhaven in the teeth of overwhelming opposition from local people.

The details are spelt out in the third and latest confidential county council document to be leaked to Lewes MP Norman Baker. The document, which relates to the sale of the ground leasehold interest, reveals that:

• The councils have agreed to pay a rental for the incinerator site starting at £400,000 a year, rising to £550,000 a year by 2011.

• In subsequent years, the rent will rise every year in line with the retail price index, with a guaranteed annual uplift of 2%

• At the end of the lease period, the county council will not even own the site and will have to hand it back, despite having activated a compulsory purchase process

• The agreement entered into does however place full legal liability on the councils to pay for the clean-up of the land at the end of the lease period

Last year, documents leaked to the Lib Dem MP revealed that the cost of the incinerator had doubled to an eye-watering £145 million.

The latest leaked document also reveals that the incinerator will every year produce a whopping 52,900 tonnes of toxic "bottom ash" and 6,300 tonnes of "top ash", all of which will have to be removed from the site by lorry with much being dumped in an approved landfill site at considerable cost.

Norman Baker says: "This latest document reveals in stark terms just what a terrible financial liability this incinerator is for the people of East Sussex, Brighton and Hove. The terms agreed by the council are crippling and represent exceedingly bad value for local taxpayers. The annual uprating and guaranteed rises represent the sort of package pensioners would love to have. And it is beyond belief that the county has signed a deal that not only means they have to hand back the land in 50 years' time, but incredibly, they have agreed to pay the full clean-up costs, which could be enormous.

"Furthermore, the fact that the incinerator will produce 59,000 tonnes of ash to dispose of each year, from an input of 210,000 tonnes of household waste, suggests that this plant will be less "energy from waste" and more "waste from waste"

"The decision to proceed with an incinerator was bad enough, but the way the matter has been mishandled by the Tory county council has turned it into an enormous financial millstone round the necks of local people for the next 50 years and beyond.".