Council ordered to reveal secret documents on waste plant
IT HAS COST TENS OF MILLIONS BUT IS STILL NOT RUNNING
DERBY City Council has been rapped for keeping secret key documents on a failed waste plant.
The controversial Sinfin plant is still not operating, despite costing tens of millions of pounds.
Campaigner Simon Bacon has tried to find out details of the process by which the plant was set up, but was sent blacked-out documents.
He appealed and the council – which set up the plant jointly with Derbyshire County Council – has now been ordered to reveal the papers in full.
It has been given 35 days by the Information Commission Office to hand over the details.
Environment campaigner Mr Bacon claims the council’s position shows it “doesn’t care about wasting public money”.
He complained to the ICO after submitting a Freedom of Information request to the council to see the plant’s service continuity contract, two leases and draft inter-authority agreement and receiving dozens of blacked-out, or redacted, pages.
He initially appealed to the council but this was turned down and so he took his complaint to the ICO.
It has now ruled that the council failed to demonstrate that the “public interest in disclosure outweighs the public interest in maintaining the exception” and also the authority also breached regulations by “failing to provide information within 20 working days”.
But the Commissioner did agree that the council had correctly withheld public access to third party personal data within the documents. If the council fails to comply with the ICO directive, then a written acknowledgement of this could be sent to the High Court and may be dealt with as a contempt of court.
Mr Bacon originally asked for a copy of all documents relating to the new waste disposal contract for the currently non-operational Sinfin waste plant, specifying that it “should be in non-redacted form as was the case when the original disposal contract was provided to me after a previous ruling by the Information Commissioner”, on August 6, 2019. The council provided some information but not all on October 31, 2019, citing reasons why it had not provided all of the documents. This was contested by Mr Bacon and after an internal review, the council sent a response on January 6, 2020 outlining why it was not sending the information and upholding its original decision.
The council had cited confidentiality of commercial or industrial information and unfinished documents or incomplete data, as well as third party data, for redacting the document.
The council was in breach of the 20 day rule for requests by the public and instead took 62 days to respond.
In its investigation response to the ICO, where the Council provided its arguments for the application of the exceptions, it asked the Commissioner to carefully consider its arguments concerning economic harm caused by disclosure and invited her to ask any questions she may have, on a confidential basis.
The report said: “Given that the council had from July 16, 2020 to September 30, 2020 to provide its response, the Commissioner considers this was more than adequate to enable the Council to provide full and final representation.”
Mr Bacon made a similar FOI request in 2015 for an earlier contract and was given a redacted copy then also. He took it to appeal to ICO and after two years of wrangling finally received a clean copy of the contract.
He believes that the council should have heeded the previous ruling from the ICO and given him a clean copy instead of blacking out the “heart of the contract”.
Mr Bacon said: “I am very disappointed with the council who ignored the fact they were instructed last time to provide the contract (and did so) and went ahead, and if anything, redacted more of the new contract than last time.
“I feel it shows the council thinks it can walk over members of the public and clearly doesn’t care about wasting public money to hide contracts from the public.
“Clearly the ICO agreed with the case I put forward and now I would hope the council will use common sense when considering its next move and provides the required documents as instructed.”
It shows the council thinks it can walk over members of the public and clearly doesn’t care about wasting money. Simon Bacon
The council has a right of appeal against the decision within 28 days.
A city council spokesman said: “The council is considering its position as a result of the recent ICO decision.
“Given that the ruling was published only three days ago, we will now take time to consider what steps we will take next.”
Controversy has surrounded Sinfin waste plant ever since it was first suggested back at the beginning of the century to deal with all of Derbyshire’s household waste.
The plant was intended to divert 190,000 tonnes of rubbish per year away from expensive landfill by heat-treating waste to produce a gas which is then burned to create enough electricity to power 14,000 homes.
In 2004, Derby City Council and Derbyshire County Council entered into a joint bid for £65 million in Government Private Finance Initiative (PFI) credits to build two waste treatment centres.
Public consultation on the scheme began in 2009 and the next four years involved court action, petitions against the development and the creation of action groups.
In 2013, an appeal against planning permission failed and work started on the Sinfin Lane site.
But in 2017, the plant failed to open and two years later, after numerous complaints from residents about flies and smells, the contract was terminated with Resource Recovery Solutions Derbyshire (RRS)
For more than 12 months, the site has been cleaned up and evaluated and discussions are still ongoing about a financial settlement for the redundant plant between the banks and the councils.