Stephen Hodgson

Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category

The first hustings for Loughborough candidates in this year’s General Election has been announced.

Details are as follows:

Time: 7.30pm, Tuesday 13 April 2010
Location: John Storer House, Loughborough
Host: Action for a Better Charnwood (ABC)
Discussion: Environmental policies

This is the first opportunity of this election campaign for people in Loughborough to see the candidates on the same platform. ABC have not announced a limit on attendance or pre-registration requirements so please simply come along on the night.

On Tuesday evening (19 January) I attended the public meeting of the recently-formed Shepshed Against Incinerator Group – or “SAIG”. The group’s purpose is self-explanatory – it is a campaign against plans by Biffa to construct an incinerator on the edge of Shepshed. The proposal is currently being considered by Leicestershire County Council.

SAIG was formed by local resident Carol Weller. The campaign has a website and a Facebook group.

Tuesday evening’s meeting was well-attended – I counted at least 40 members of the public plus five borough and county councillors. Most of the hour and a half was taken up with a presentation by Keith Kondakor – a member of Friends of the Earth (FOE) from Nuneaton – who told the meeting about the science and environmental issues concerning incinerators as well as touching on the political process and the strategy the campaign should adopt to successfully stop an incinerator being built in Shepshed.

Whilst SAIG and FOE representative Keith Kondakor are clearly well-intentioned, the meeting didn’t go particularly well, which was evidenced early on by the number of people who left mid-way through Mr Kondakor’s presentation. Audience members complained that Mr Kondakor was spending too long talking about details of science and health effects of incinerators rather than speaking about the particular plans for Shepshed and how residents can campaign effectively.

I found Mr Kondakor’s presentation quite interesting and he clearly knows a lot about incinerators and about the planning process for incinerators but things went downhill when Mr Kondakor starting talking about local councillors. The five borough and county councillors present had all introduced themselves at the start of the meeting but this didn’t stop Mr Kondakor describing councillors as “like children” and “stupid”. Not the best campaign tactic I’ve come across.

Sadly, it got worse. Mr Kondakor went on to say that Biffa is offering “bribes” to councillors and “lucrative jobs” to county council waste department staff to make sure the incinerator gets the go-ahead. I thought this was not only patently wrong but also potentially slanderous and dangerous. The SAIG campaign should probably consider distancing itself from these sorts of comments otherwise its reputation could be damaged. I can only assume Mr Kondakor, despite his previous campaigning experience, didn’t realise that alleging at a public meeting that councillors are being offered bribes is such a serious matter that councillors at the meeting are required to report the allegations to their council’s monitoring officer (the officer in charge of monitoring professional and ethical standards, conflicts of interest etc), which I have done.

All that aside, there is clearly a lot of interest from Shepshed and west Loughborough residents in the incinerator site and there are a lot of people who will put a lot of effort into campaigning against the proposed incinerator. The challenge now is for SAIG and concerned residents to stick to rational, cool-headed discussions and campaign tactics.

The next public meeting about the Shepshed incinerator has been organised by Shepshed Town Council to take place on 8 March 2010 at Shepshed High School – no doubt fuller details will be available in due course in the local press and on SAIG’s website.

Update (22/01/10): Keith Kondakor of Friends of the Earth writes in response to this blog post:

Dear Stephen,

As you should know the meeting in Loughborough was not arranged by the Shepshed group but by a fellow councillor. If the Shepshed group had arranged it then a location in Shepshed would have been used.

I have no evidence of Biffa doing anything illegal or improper. In response to questions I told the public of what has happened in other places where communities are “bribed” by gifts from large waste firms. Local Charities are given minibus, sports clubs are given grants and miners welfare clubs are refitted. I even have a photo of a local councillor handing over the keys of a minibus that is being presented to a local community group. The gifts are not illegal and are not presented to those who take the decisions.

Waste PFIs also creates new highly paid post at the council and many councils go on to form free-standing waste partnerships, waste board or even arm-length waste companies. The top waste officers at other councils have significant job upgrades when they manage a PFI project with around £10,000 higher salary. Senior waste officers who work on PFI projects are very marketable. Some move round authorities and get better packaged and some retire to become waste consultants.

I am more than happy for you to alert the public that waste firms may offer substantial gifts to community groups but I did not say BIFFA currently doing this here.

The lucrative posts comment was in response to  a question about why the staff are pushing ahead with the PFI. The council puts staff in lucrative posts to manage the PFI process and these posts would not exist if the PFI was scrapped. This is nothing to do with which firm gets the PFI contract.

I would welcome you adjusting your website so that it reflects the debate on the evening. I really hoped the campaign would put party politics aside and was glad that what party people belonged to was not an issue at the meeting.

Keith agreed that I could publish his e-mail to me in full by way of clarification.

In response to Keith’s comments:

* I was led to understand the meeting on Tuesday evening was a formative meeting of Shepshed Against Incinerator Group (SAIG).

* Keith’s comments on the evening came across to me as suggesting Biffa were or would imminently be offering “bribes” (the term Keith used) to councillors in Charnwood and Leicestershire – both cash and “in kind”.

* I welcome Keith’s clarification regarding “lucrative jobs” and the interaction of the incinerator proposals with the PFI contract.

* I don’t think the Shepshed incinerator has become a party political issue – if it has, I’m certaintly not currently aware of where the parties stand on it.