Cov & Warks PFI Protest at Treasury
May 21st, 2009
On Tuesday, 19th May, I lead at protest at the treasury in Whitehall against the approval of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) funding for an even bigger incinerator in Coventry.
The Treasury does not take letters or emails from the public when deciding to award over £100m to the private sector to run a billion pound 25-year waste contract. Unlike small matters of planning the public has no ability to object to the awarding of vast contracts. The projections used to model the Coventry incinerator are wildly inaccurate even for the amount of waste produced in the past two years. The error between reality for the total waste produced and the business plan for 2008/9 will be between 50,000 and 100,000 tonnes of waste produced. For every 10,000 tonnes of waste that does not need burning £1million a year could be saved.
I feel we have not had a fair hearing, which is not surprising. The anti-recycling officer at Coventry city council has been awarded a new £63-£70K job in the days before they went to the treasury panel. Such a lucrative post only exists because of the incinerator PFI. The Treasury panel is also unlikely to be against a PFI as it is chaired by Charles Lloyd. He works for PricewaterhouseCoopers as head of PFI and has been lent out to push PFI at the Treasury. PricewaterhouseCoopers also were paid by Coventry and Warwickshire councils to do the early work on the PFI. I obtained this report under the freedom of information act only after appealing to the information commissioner.
In order to protest at Westminster I had to apply for permission under the serious and organised crime act. This did mean it was legal to shout very loudly about the corruption going on inside.
This PFI will go badly wrong as it is based on flawed business case and reality will come back and bite. I just hope a billion pound contract is not signed before they find out its all wrong. I would have thought that the mess of the Coventry Hospital PFI would have been a lesson.
see full story at http://ukwin.org.uk/2009/05/20/pfi-protest-at-treasury/
and http://www.letsrecycle.com/do/ecco.py/view_item?listid=37&listcatid=240&listitemid=7220
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