Up to 50 jobs affected by Scottish Water's embarrassing volte face after waste plans are trashed

Sunday 10 March 2013

SCOTTISH Water's business arm is performing an embarrassing retrenchment from waste treatment that will see one west of Scotland plant close and another scaled back several years after they were opened, affecting 40 to 50 jobs.

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By Steve Vass

Scottish Water Horizons (SWH) has told staff that it will close its composting site at Linwood in Renfrewshire and close the same activities at its Deerdykes site in Cumbernauld to leave only its anaerobic digester (AD), which turns food waste into heat and power.

The Sunday Herald has also learned that the Deerdykes site is being investigated by environment agency Sepa for issues concerning its pollution prevention and control (PPC) permit. Neither Sepa nor SWH would comment on the exact nature of the investigation, but it is understood that there have been numerous local complaints about odours emanating from the site. The decision to scale back its ambitions for the two sites follows a full-scale review of its waste business after it became apparent last year that fees from council rubbish and budgets were lower than expected. SWH refused to release the details of the review last week. The move will be seen as a huge volte face for the quango, whose strategy had been to turn these two former waste water plants into waste management sites that could take advantage of rising council recycling targets and compete head to head with the private sector. Having spent £7 million on the AD facility alone at Deerdykes, which heats the nearby Barr's Irn-Bru factory, SWH had planning permission to build a similar facility at Linwood that now looks unlikely to go ahead. Granted in 2008, it lapses this year. It began composting at Deerdykes in 2005 and Linwood in 2008, adding AD in 2011. In the most recent Scottish Water accounts for the financial year 2011-12, the SWH and international divisions made a £1.5m pre-tax surplus on £18.5m turnover. SWH would not comment on how much the assets would be written down in the accounts, but made clear that the venture did not involve Scottish Water customer money and was entirely funded from within the SWH businesses. SWH has attracted much vitriol from private contractors after beating their tenders with prices that they could not match. The composting businesses predominantly convert garden waste, though they process some waste food as well. One angry contractor said: "They were offering rates that were not even enough to pay for the processing, never mind pay for men and equipment. I don't know how it was even possible. Whatever they were doing, it hasn't worked for them."On the day that SWH opened the AD plant at Deerdykes, Scottish Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead was quoted saying he was "confident that facilities such as Deerdykes ... will make a significant contribution to a zero-waste Scotland."A Scottish Water spokesman said: "Following a detailed review of future business and market opportunities, Scottish Water Horizons is concentrating on developing its renewable energy portfolio and its anaerobic digestion food waste recycling plant at Deerdykes."Horizons will withdraw from green waste composting activities at Deerdykes and Johnstone. We will, however, honour all existing contracts until their expiry."Employees affected by these changes will be transferred to roles, either at Deerdykes, or elsewhere within Scottish Water."

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Up to 50 jobs affected by Scottish Water's embarrassing volte face after waste plans are trashed

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