North Yorkshire Council is facing a call for an independent review of the £1.4bn contract with the Allerton Waste Recovery Park (AWRP) after the plant failed to meet its recycling target for the seventh consecutive year.
The facility near Knaresborough has consistently fallen short of its target to recycle or compost five per cent of residual waste since it became operational, annual reports show.
The plant, operated by Thalia Waste Management, has instead recorded recycling rates of between one per cent and two per cent, with its best performance reaching 2.02 per cent in 2022/23.
The two most recent years achieved 1.75 per cent and 1.76 per cent respectively.
Green Party councillor, David Noland, a member of the authority’s transport, economy, environment and enterprise scrutiny committee, said the continued failure raised important questions about whether the facility had delivered what was promised.
“Seven years after opening, Allerton Waste Recovery Park still hasn’t met its recycling target once,” he said.
“People were promised a modern facility that would recycle more, send less waste to landfill and deliver better value for money.
“Instead, we’ve seen missed targets, repeated breakdowns and a contract that seems to accept failure as long as a financial penalty is paid.
“Residents deserve an independent review so we can find out whether this project has really delivered what was promised.”
Council reports have attributed the repeated failures over the years to a range of factors, including poor markets for recovered recyclables, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, rising energy costs, failures of mechanical treatment equipment, conveyor replacement work, staffing shortages, energy-from-waste outages and periods when waste had to bypass parts of the recycling process.
The latest annual report was presented this week to the executive member for managing our environment, Councillor Richard Foster.
It noted that the plant’s performance over 2025/26 had been “disappointing”.
A planned maintenance shutdown of the energy-from-waste plant overran by more than a week after starting in March, while further technical issues following the restart led to additional periods of unplanned downtime.
A second shutdown took place in October and November to replace superheater cells on both energy-from-waste lines.
Although one line remained operational throughout the work and the maintenance was completed on schedule, the council said the plant only returned to delivering high availability and consistent performance after the upgrades were finished.
The Green Party argues that the contract itself may be contributing to the continued underperformance.
Rather than treating missed recycling targets as a contractual default, the agreement allows them to be dealt with through financial deductions applied as part of the plant’s key performance indicators.
Critics say this means the target can continue to be missed year after year without triggering stronger contractual action, provided the agreed deductions are made.
Cllr Foster told the Local Democracy Reporting Service he was unsure who would actually produce an independent report as called for by the Green Party.
He added: “We’ve got a waste strategy ongoing at the moment, which will take into account what’s going on at Allerton Park.
“There’s been a working group set up with the scrutiny committee, although none of the Green members appears to want to be on it, which is quite odd.
“We are where we are at the moment, but Allerton Park does produce power for 65,000 homes from the waste of North Yorkshire so I think it’s delivering on that part and we continue to recycle at relatively high levels.”
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