On examination the Outline Business Case has many flaws especially when considering its financial assessment. These flaws arise because it is far too early at this stage to decide on the capacity of the plant. The plan to fill spare capacity is flawed as this would have to be sold at a small fraction of the PFI cost. Future trends are:

• Trade and commercial waste will go to the cheapest outlet which will be Rugby Cement which wishes to burn 300,000 tonnes of waste alone. They are likely to charge a very low gate fee for suitable waste.

• All office waste is destined to be sorted to extract value from the recyclable paper.

• All non-household food waste is likely to go for anaerobic digestion (AD) and large producers of food waste are buying their own AD plants to provide a source of energy for their own firms.

• In future, large tonnages of end-of-line waste will be ash from power stations and incinerators which cannot be further burned to provide energy.

All our surrounding councils have plans for oversized waste plants with most plans being for 20-30% extra capacity. The councils with the other 4 incinerators in the West Midlands will have more surplus capacity as they edge nearer towards 50% recycling. Any contracts for outside waste sources will have been taken by them and we would be one of the last to become operational. The proposed incinerator is far too large and far too expensive. Since Coventry’s annual share of the cost will be £9m pa when the budget allows for only £4.5m (even after the £3.6m PFI credit) the project is unaffordable.

Our Local Government Officers are refusing to undertake a cost exercise for the building of a far smaller plant that would be used 100% of the time instead of this oversized plant which would be only used for 80% of the time until 2027 (even with continuous waste growth). They have supplied no sensible option

Read the Coventry Evening Telegraph's report here.