Council sets terms of reference for inquiry into failed waste project

Norfolk County Council has issued the terms of reference for its independent inquiry into a failed waste project that ended up costing the local authority more than £33m.

The project would have seen contractor Cory Wheelabrator build an incinerator at the Willows, near Kings Lynn, to handle the county’s residual waste.

But the project was dogged by controversy and was last year called for in for planning determination by communities and local government secretary Eric Pickles.

He promised a decision by January this year but failed to make one.

Norfolk claimed that the delays in starting the project meant, even if Pickles later gave consent, it could never deliver the savings expected before its fixed end point.

In April the county council decided to end Cory Wheelabrator's contract and abandon the project, opening it to a compensation bill to the company of more than £30m.

Whitehall has refused to help Norfolk with this cost, despite the county’s claim that it had incurred the bill because of the Secretary of State's inaction.

Local government minister Baroness Stowell wrote: “The details and clauses of any local procurement contract are a private matter between the relevant parties. It is for the local authority to assess the risks and benefits of any local contract prior to agreeing to it.

“It is not appropriate for national taxpayers to provide funding for penalty costs, should they arise, from locally-procured contracts.”

The inquiry will be led by Stephen Revell, a former Liberal Democrat co-leader of the council when his party was in coalition with Labour in the 1990s. He is also a former chair of Norfolk’s standards committee.

Revell will examine how Norfolk came to proceed with the contract, “member involvement in the process, their relationship and dealings with officers, who had delegated authority to act on behalf of Norfolk County Council and the reporting process to the leadership of the authority”, the terms of reference state.

The inquiry will also look at governance issues including member involvement in detailed decision-making, the role the then ruling Conservative group played and “why the full council was not consulted before the contract was awarded”.

Norfolk’s planning and scrutiny committees’ roles will be probed too over “how and why their make-up changed prior to consideration of this issue”.

For the contract itself, Mr Revell will examine whether the contract process “differed in any way from other local authorities with emphasis on termination costs” and how Norfolk ended up terminating the contract.