Wrexham Council content to be only North Wales authority not involved in new £800m Deeside waste management facility

Wrexham Council appear content to not be part of the new state-of-the-art Parc Adfer waste-to-energy plant that is expected to open on schedule in May.

Up the road Deeside.com reported how Colin Everett, chief executive of Flintshire Council which is leading the project, said it would help to cut costs for all organisations involved.

The only North Wales body not involved is Wrexham Council, which is locked into a related Private Finance Initiative (PFI) which is costing it £15m-a-year. There have been calls for ministers in Cardiff to take a look at the deal with FCC Environment, which could set the authority back by at least £419 million over its lifespan – and we were told by then new First Minister Mark Drakeford that was on his todo list.

Previously we have written about the scrutiny of the PFI deal, with one mention of it in a meeting indicating possible exploration had taken place to exit the deal, although no figures were given in public to how much it would cost to make such a move:

Officer tells meeting 'external review' took place to explore quitting the PFI waste deal. Meeting told would have cost a sizeable wodge!

— Wrexham.com (@wrexham) October 24, 2017

Having sat in hours of meetings that talk about cross-authority partnership working and in light of the news from Deeside we asked Wrexham Council for comment on why Wrexham was the only one not involved in the project.

We also asked if Wrexham Council thought not being involved was more beneficial than being involved.

Finally we also noted that Wrexham’s large PFI waste deal had been examined for get-outs previously (as above), and enquired if that was a desirable outcome, or if WCBC was content with the agreement longer term.

Darren Williams, the new Service Manager for Environment at Wrexham Council, told us: “Our contract with FCC (Wrexham) PFI Ltd for the processing of municipal waste began in April 2009, and runs until March 2038. As such, it predates the Deeside facility by a number of years.

“During that time, it has allowed us to exceed the Welsh Government’s recycling targets, and this is expected to continue in the future.”