Government awards £100m of PFI credits for Essex waste plant

The government has awarded £100.9m of PFI credits to the Essex County Council and Southend-on-Sea Borough Council waste partnership for the construction of a new waste treatment plant.

A contract notice for the plant is set to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) in the next few weeks.

The plant could be an anaerobic digester or some other form of energy-from-waste plant, although plans have not yet been finalised.

The project is expected to divert an additional 185,000t of biodegradable municipal waste (BMW) from landfill per year by 2020, according to the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.