GCC facing High Court case over revised incinerator contract

Local circular economy campaigning group Community R4C, with the help of a specialist procurement law barrister, has discovered that Gloucestershire County Council did not follow proper procedure when renegotiating the already astronomically expensive Javelin Park incinerator contract. 

Given the huge increase in cost (now known to be a staggering £150M - 30%), according to procurement rules the contract should have gone out to tender again... and if it had, Community R4C could have put a bid in... and we could have had a cleaner, greener and wildly cheaper solution to Gloucestershire's waste.

Instead, the small group of GCC cabinet members and key council officers dealing with the contract decided not to make clear to full council (nor to GCC's scrutiny committee in November 2015) what the scale of the increase was. For 3 whole years the official GCC line has been that variation to the original contract was not material, i.e. not of great significance.

None of this was clear until an analysis was done of the revised figures released only a month ago.  

Community R4C has now instigated court proceedings, and the council has yet to respond.

Major press interest

Coverage has been extensive already in the last 48 hours with BBC, ITV, GlosLive and the SNJ all carrying the story, as well as the industry press. Quite right too - we reckon an increase of £150M is pretty significant, and we're delighted to hear that GCC is being challenged.  Watch this space.

A whole wormery under there...

It seems every layer of secrecy peeled away reveals more rottenness beneath. Sooner or later we might even find out WHY the public and indeed many councillors were ignored, silenced and kept in the dark in order to push through possibly the worst waste processing deal in the UK. Well done Community R4C for being so on the ball and taking forward this latest legal development.

We're even feeling that "cans of worms" and "wormery" analogies are a bit harsh on the worms in this context.  Worms after all are key to creating good compost.  GCC's wasteful and deceptive behaviour is being shown to be infinitely worse.