Council denies failure over recycling facility wait

Cambridge's recycled waste is transported to Northern Ireland of processing

A city's recycling waste is still being taken over 400 miles away to be sorted even though residents were told that a facility would open closer to home.

Cambridge's recycling waste has been transported to Newry in Northern Ireland since March by waste management firm Re-Gen after it won a contract with the city council and South Cambridgeshire District Council in January.

But a press release from Cambridge City Council in February said the firm had plans to open a materials recovery facility on the UK mainland "within the first half of this year."

In a full council meeting on Thursday, Green Party councillor Jean Glasberg said there were "still no signs that a new UK mainland MRF has been acquired by Re-Gen, or that such an acquisition is due to take place".

She asked what steps had been taken to "investigate this apparent failure", according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Labour councillor Rosy Moore, cabinet member for climate action and environment, said there had been no "failure" as the contract had been awarded based on the Newry facility, and that the plans to acquire a mainland facility had only been made known afterwards.

She added that Re-Gen had offered the best option in terms of cost and quality of the processing.

Ms Moore said that Re-Gen was still continuing to pursue acquiring a UK mainland MRF, but said she did not currently have an update on this facility yet.

She added that the reference to the facility opening in the first half of this year actually referred to the first half of the contract year, which she said had started in March.