AHEAD of the decision due to take place at the end of the month, Gloucestershire County Council has come up with three alternative options should the Government reject plans to build the Javelin Park incinerator.

A cross party working group, tasked with finding a plan b for Gloucestershire’s household waste, published its report this week.

Following a motion agreed at full council in May 2013, the residual waste working group was asked to consider a fall-back strategy for disposing of Gloucestershire’s household waste in the event that the Secretary of State upholds the planning committee’s refusal to grant planning permission for an energy from waste facility at Javelin Park.

After considering all of the technologies available, hearing from industry experts and visiting existing facilities, the group agreed that the county council has three options as a potential plan b.

One of the options being put forward is to build another energy from waste facility locally.

However, the group said that while there were reasons to consider an energy from waste facility, it acknowledged that if the current proposal from Urbaser Balfour Beatty was not successful, it would be better to look at the other two options to avoid being in the same position again.

The other two options included using existing or proposed facilities out of the county or building a mechanical treatment or mechanical biological treatment (MBT) facility locally – an option that has been supported by the anti-incineration groups from the start.

GlosVAIN spokesman Ian Richens said: “GlosVAIN welcome the plan b committee’s deliberations but should the appeal from UBB be rejected then the only other alternative is an MBT.

“Waste management firm Cory has planning permission to build a 70,000 tpa MBT unit at Whitmore Farm combined with a 30,000 anaerobic digestion plant and these, combined with the use of existing facilities for disposal of domestic waste, would provide ample capacity.”