Contract FOI

Current Status of request for full disclosure of the incinerator contract:

• Tribunal Hearing will be held in April/May 2016 for GCC's Appeal of the Decision Notice

Contract Documents

The contract documents that have been obtained to date can be found on the FOI Documents page.

The main contract document is termed the "Project Agreement" and it has, in turn, a large number of "Schedules".

Background

• GlosVAIN has been trying to obtain the full incinerator contract for a number of years. In 2013, GCC released parts of the contract with many redactions (blacking out) of key information. In 2015, further attempts were initiated to obtain the full contract. GCC refused to provide the full details and so requestors complained to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO). It is hoped that the key financial details will ultimately be disclosed because the ICO has previously ruled that they should be in the case of other incinerator contracts in England. However, it is a slow process. A final outcome is expected by mid September 2015.
• GlosVAIN contends that the full contract, including termination costs, is needed to allow proper scrutiny of the soundness or otherwise of the case for continuing with the incinerator. Lack of transparency is directly affecting the democratic processes in the Council, with potentially enormous financial ramifications.
• A“38 Degrees” petition demanding contract disclosure has obtained 4,700 signatures, showing the genuine weight of public interest and concern about non-disclosure of this information.

• The reasons allowable for withholding the information under the heading of "commercial confidentiality" would have to be that there is either a trade secret that disclosure would reveal, or, that the commercial interests of GCC or UBB would be prejudiced. These would have to outweigh the public interest for releasing the information in order for the information to be withheld.

• At the Council’s Extraordinary Meeting that took place on 18th February, many councilors voting on whether or not to terminate the incinerator contract, complained about the lack of access to the relevant financial information. The contract termination costs remain undisclosed. A wide variety of figures were cited by GCC’s leaders, ranging from £60m to £150m, but none of these have been substantiated.

• The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is the UK’s independent authority set up to uphold information rights in the public interest, promoting openness by public bodies and data privacy for individuals. https://ico.org.uk/

Timeline of incinerator contract FOI request