Council could sell Harrogate district grass verge cuttings

North Yorkshire County Council will trial collecting the grass it cuts from verges, saying cuttings that have for years been left to rot away are “a potential revenue-earner”.

The council will examine the commercial demand for harnessing energy from the cuttings to boost the country’s electricity supply while also improving the biodiversity and appearance of its road network.

The authority has approved investigating the benefits of taking grass cuttings to one or more anaerobic digesters as it continues trials of alternate rural grass cutting regimes to identify ways it can help to enhance flora, while ensuring changes grass cutting regimes do not impact on highway safety.

It comes days after Harrogate Borough Council said it intended to repeat last year’s experiment of leaving parts of the Stray to grow wild to encourage biodiversity.

Three-year trial

The trials at about 20 locations across the county are set to last three years.

Following the authority significantly reducing the amount of verge mowing in 2015 to save an annual £500,000 as part of austerity cutbacks, grass cutting and verge management has continued to be one of the leading issues raised by residents.

With county council-funded cuts in urban and rural areas reduced to five and two per season respectively, the authority has been approached by several town councils seeking to enhance biodiversity in their communities.

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An officer’s report states while cut grass is currently left on the verges to decompose, the authority is preparing a proposal for funding from its Beyond Carbon programme to allow for a commercial cut and collect operation to be assessed, alongside identifying the “wider appetite for verge cutting material” from anaerobic digestion firms.

Cllr Don Mackenzie, the authority’s executive member for access, said although collecting the cuttings would cost more, the grass could be used at the Allerton Waste Recovery Plant near Knaresborough to generate electricity and make money for the authority.

He said:

“If you remove the grass cuttings, the advantage to the environment is it makes the soil much less fertile which would encourage the growth of the sorts of wildflowers, such as buttercups, poppies and cornflowers that people would like to see on their verges.

“Leaving the grass cuttings on the verges tends to encourage only the growth of nettles and course grass.”

The authority’s leadership believes that with the relatively simple change of collecting the cuttings they could see what was a lose-lose situation transform into a win-win one.

Cllr Mackenzie said:

“You get criticism from both sides of the spectrum. Certain people say because some verges have been left uncut they look untidy while others question why the verges are being cut as it doesn’t encourage biodiversity. While we get criticism from both sides, if we are in the middle we are just about getting it right.”

Harrogate man accused of causing cyclist’s death by dangerous driving

A Harrogate man has appeared in court charged with causing the death of a cyclist by dangerous driving.

James Bryan, 36, of St Mary’s Avenue, was driving a Porsche Carrera when the incident occurred on the A168 northbound between Allerton Park and Boroughbridge on May 10, 2020. The A168 runs alongside the A1.

He is accused of causing the death of Andrew Jackson, 36, a husband and father-of-two from Hunsingore, near Wetherby.

Mr Jackson died at the scene.

Mr Bryan appeared at Harrogate Magistrates Court yesterday, where the case was sent for trial at York Crown Court.

It is due to be heard on April 4.

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£1.2bn Knaresborough incinerator has never met recycling targets

Environmental concerns have been raised over the performance of a controversial £1.2 billion waste recovery plant near Knaresborough after it emerged it has never met recycling targets.

A meeting of North Yorkshire County Council’s transport, environment and economy scrutiny committee heard councillors question whether the Allerton Park Waste Recovery venture had turned out to be fundamentally flawed.

The council awarded a contract to private company AmeyCespa to create the facility in 2014. It can process up to 320,000 tonnes of waste per year from York and North Yorkshire councils.

Peter Jeffreys, head of waste for both York and North Yorkshire councils told the meeting that since the site was launched in March 2018 “it’s been a slightly rocky start”, but there were a lot of positive signs that the plant was moving in the right direction.

He said councils were paying £3 less per tonne of waste than was forecast before the plant, which takes 220,000 tonnes of public waste and 50,000 tonnes of business waste annually, became operational.

A report to the meeting detailed how the councils had set a target of recycling or composting five per cent of the household waste it received, but the amount actually recycled or composted was between one and two per cent.

As a result of missing the targets, the councils levied AmeyCespa with a total of £653,000 in performance deductions for the first three years of the operation alone.

Mr Jeffreys said: 

“Whilst we are levying those reductions it doesn’t give us any satisfaction. We would far rather they hit the targets.”

Mr Jeffreys said the environmental targets had been missed partly because the mechanical treatment part of the plant had not been reliable. He said Amey had reconfigured the plant to push more materials through the mechanical treatment process.

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He said covid had led to staff shortages, which had seen the mechanical treatment area bypassed on some occasions.

25-year contract

In response, some councillors questioned whether the system was proving as much as a success as had been forecast when the scheme was approved amid a public outcry.

Cllr David Goode, a Liberal Democrat who represents Knaresborough, said the situation did not appear as positive as the council was making out, having missed key targets since the operation launched.

He said he was “struggling” with the initiative, bearing in mind the authority’s carbon reduction strategy, the government’s revised policies over waste management and the drive towards reducing reliance on single use items.

Cllr Goode said: 

“And then I look at a 25-year contract that seems to encourage us to maximise that amount of waste we are putting through to get the financial returns that we’re looking for and a government strategy that seems to indicate we would have to fundamentally change the nature of the contract that we have currently got.”

Mr Jeffreys said the authority was not “incentivising maximising waste”, but rather was finding a good end destination for business waste that could otherwise end up in landfill.”

‘Fantastic asset’

The committee’s chairman, Cllr Stanley Lumley, a Conservative who represents Pateley Bridge, said:

“Allerton waste plant was very controversial when it was going through the process of council and planning. I think it’s proved to be a fantastic asset for North Yorkshire.”

The council’s waste executive director Cllr Derek Bastiman said after visiting the site he was encouraged to see the amount of cardboard and plastic that was recovered from general waste.

He said: 

“It’s still the families that need educating on keeping their waste clean, whether that’s plastic bottle or cardboard.

“If they did that then we could recycle more than we do. If families could just be a bit more considerate when disposing of their waste that would certainly help with our figures.”