Community R4C Exposes Hidden Costs of Gloucestershire’s Incinerator Contract

Community R4C, a community-owned organisation advocating for lower-cost, environmentally sustainable waste management, has published a damning report on the extraordinary financial impact of the Gloucestershire County Council’s (GCC) waste incineration contract at Javelin Park. Far from delivering promised savings, the contract has
cost taxpayers millions more than landfill and is set to become even more expensive with the application of UK ETS to incineration from 2028, a form of carbon tax.

Using the Council’s own data and UK waste treatment benchmarks, analysis reveals that Gloucestershire’s incinerator gate fees are among the highest in the UK. Instead of saving £100
million over its lifetime, as the County Council claimed, it has already cost taxpayers £42
million more than landfill over its first five years.

The report is published today on the UK Without Incineration Network (UKWIN) website along
with a financial analysis of the contract they have commissioned to corroborate the findings.
UKWIN have previously published data on the environmental impact of incineration and link to
the October 2024 BBC report, “Buning rubbish, now the UK’s dirtiest form of power”.

Tom Jarman, co-founder of Community R4C, stated: “This report confirms that the incinerator
deal struck by the County Council is a huge financial burden, while being a highly harmful
environmental millstone. The Council continue to claim savings, when in fact the opposite is
the case, it is high time for transparency from the Council. Underlying costs are higher than
any known comparable contract. Anyone would ask: how did the Council commit to such a
bad deal?
We must now see changes to the contract and waste management if we are to minimise costs
for local taxpayers and achieve net zero ambitions.”

“It is extremely disappointing that members of the Council’s cabinet continue to issue
misleading claims about the true cost of this contract. For example, in response to a formal
public question in November 2024 a cabinet member stated that the Council did not pay for
electricity generated, the same cabinet member has issued claims of the benefit from the
spike in energy prices, claiming £15m of ‘benefit to fund important services’. As our report
shows these claims are incorrect. The Council purchases electricity generated by the plant,
which it can then resell. The spike in prices also resulted in higher costs to the Council for
energy used. The true net benefit to Council budgets of this price spike was just £4.2m in the
first five years of the contract, and any benefit will not continue. This benefit is dwarfed by the
huge increase in gate fees which the Council must now pay.”

Key Findings from the Report:

• High Gate Fees: The underlying cost of incineration at Javelin Park is £194 per tonne,
  50% higher than landfill and significantly above UK incineration benchmarks. This cost
  is higher than any other plant in the UK reported in the WRAP survey.
• Rising Public Costs: GCC has spent £42 million more on gate fees than it would have
  spent on landfill
• Electricity Hedging Impact: GCC temporarily benefited from selling electricity at high
  prices during the Ukraine war energy crisis. The impact on Council budgets has been far
  less than claimed, being just £4.2m in 23/24 and is short lived.
• Hidden Contract Amendments: GCC secretly increased the contract’s cost from
  £450m to £613m – a 36% rise – before eventually releasing this information in 2019
• Future Cost Increases: With waste incineration being added to the UK Emissions
  Trading Scheme in 2028, UK ETS, costs could rise by a further £30-£60 per tonne unless
  major reforms are implemented.
• Loss to the Public Purse: The move to incineration has deprived HMRC of £63m in
  landfill tax revenues, pushing the total financial burden on the public to over £105m in
  the first five years.

Shlomo Dowen, National Coordinator of UKWIN, commented:
“Few incinerator contracts have been released in the public domain. We commissioned a
financial analysis of the contract to make the most of a rare opportunity to assess how
incinerator contracts operate”
“Gloucestershire’s case highlights the dangers of long-term incineration contracts. These
deals appear attractive at first but often come with hidden costs, environmental damage, and
a lack of transparency. Councils across the UK must move toward a circular economy instead
of locking into outdated, costly, and polluting incineration schemes.”
Tricia Watson, ex Community R4C Director commented: “This review totally vindicates all we
said in our formal objection to the accounts and shows our fears were understated. It is
shocking to find that our incinerator is probably the most expensive in the Country, with costs
50% higher than the landfill it replaced. If only we had had full transparency at the time this
huge burden on Gloucestershire taxpayers could have been avoided. We now need to act.”

Community R4C – The Need to Act Now

Community R4C has commissioned legal advice on steps the County can take to recover
money for the County Council from errant advisers and contractors, and how to minimise
forward costs through contract change.
Jarman added: “As a community group working for lower cost and sustainable waste
treatment, we are proud to be able to freely share this legal advice with the Council. We are
also committed to facilitate expert and community support to dramatically improve the way
we manage waste in the County”

Community R4C advocates:

1. Renegotiating the contract to remove excessive costs and contractual minimum
waste obligations.

2. Implementing residual waste pre-sort with plastic waste separation to reduce
emissions and mitigate future carbon costs arising from UK ETS.
3. Improvements in waste prevention, reuse, and recycling, adopting best practice
from elsewhere such as a reuse park
4. Committing to full transparency on financial and environmental impacts.

ENDS