South London Waste Partnership (SLWP)

Beddington Energy Recovery Facility (ERF)

In May 2009, the South London Waste Partnership embarked on a major procurement process to secure a contract for residual waste treatment.  This was the largest procurement project any of the Partner Boroughs had ever undertaken with a contract value running into hundreds of millions of pounds over the 25-year term of the contract.

In the future, all of our residual waste will require some form of treatment prior to disposal.

The procurement process came to a conclusion on Monday 5 November 2012 when the London Borough of Croydon, on behalf of the Partnership, signed a contract with Viridor.

Viridor are in the process of building a state-of-the-art Energy Recovery Facility on a plot of land just off Beddington Lane in the London Borough of Sutton.  The new facility is located right next to the existing 92-hectare landfill site, which it will replace once it becomes operational in 2018.  This landfill site is also operated by Viridor and is currently where the Partnership sends most of the residual waste collected from households in Croydon, Kingston, Merton and Sutton.

The facility will treat hundreds of thousands of tonnes of residual household waste.  It will also take in some waste from local businesses.  The facility will use tried and tested methods to extract valuable electricity and, if viable, heat from the waste, instead of it being buried in landfill.

Once operational in 2018, The Beddington ERF will:

• provide local residents and businesses with a cost-effective and environmentally sustainable alternative to landfill
• treat 95% of the waste collected from households in Croydon, Kingston, Merton and Sutton, instead of burying it in the ground
• produce 26MW of electricity each year – enough to power the facility itself plus 30,000 homes
• offer the potential to deliver low-carbon supplies of hot water for heating and domestic use to 19,000 new homes and businesses (for more information please visit the Sutton Decentralised Energy Network (SDEN) web pages
• cut carbon emission by 128,000 tonnes per year, when compared to the existing landfill operation
• enable work to transform the existing landfill site in to a country park and haven for bird life to be accelerated
• attract significant local investment and create 40 permanent jobs

Viridor’s proposal has received the backing of Sutton Council’s Planning Authority and the Mayor of London.  The Environment Agency has granted Viridor an Environmental permit for the facility.  More information about the Beddington ERF is available on Viridor’s website: Beddington ERF

The contract

In the interests of transparency and public accountability, the contract with Viridor is available for members of the public to download and view. Only information that is of a commercially sensitive nature has been blacked out:

• Download a redacted version of the contract (PDF file)
• Contract Schedule Index (PDF file)
• Schedules 1-16 (PDF file)
• Schedules 12-33 (PDF file)
• Technical Responses (zip file)

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