IN-DEPTH AND INFORMED: Sutton’s elected councillors, from across the political divide, are being ignored by the council’s senior staff over enforcement action against Valencia over the Beddington Farmlands nature reserve. It couldn’t have anything to do with Valencia providing energy to Sutton’s dodgy SDEN heat network, could it? DAVE BURTON reports

Burning issue: the saga of the Beddington Farmlands goes back 30 years, with Viridor’s incinerator at the centre of most of the problems and broken promises

The story of the Beddington Farmlands is a modern ecological tragedy.

The former landfill site should by now be restored as a wildlife haven and country park, but successive owners of the site have put energy profits before environmental obligations, and have usually been allowed to do so by Sutton Council.

The deadline for the completion of the restoration of the Beddington Farmlands into a nature reserve was supposed to be December 31, 2023. The plan to restore the landfill site has been in train for nearly 30 years, with the latest planning condition for the total restoration of the Farmlands agreed in 2015.

Last Tuesday could have been a milestone in the long-overdue restoration. An important update was brought to Sutton Council’s housing, economy and business committee for consideration. All the councillors, from the ruling Liberal Democrat group as well as opposition, all seemed very angry and were demanding Something Should Be Done.

But in the end, after some dead-batting by the council’s professional staff, nothing was resolved, and Valencia Waste Management Ltd, charged with the responsibility of the restoration since acquiring the land from incinerator operators Viridor in 2022, was given another four-month free pass.

Previous site owners Viridor had been making (ultimately empty) promises about how they were going to transform the nasty, smelly, polluted landfill site into a nature reserve as long ago as 2005. Eventually, the re-wilding of the site was presented as some kind of environmentally friendly sop in the planning conditions, a quid pro quo against Viridor being allowed to burn waste under a £1billion contract for their Beddington incinerator, and send tons of noxious fumes into the atmosphere.

Beddington Farmlands is a 400-acre site that forms a key section of the Wandle Valley Regional Park. It had been used for landfill from 1998, first by Thames Waste, then by Viridor following acquisition in 2005.

The landfill closed four years ago, as the incinerator took over the disposal of non-recyclable waste. Viridor had a legally enforceable deadline of the end of 2023 to transform the landfill as a habitat for wildlife.

Viridor never took the restoration seriously and did little work, but officials at Sutton Council claimed they were powerless to act until the 2023 deadline had passed. Which was a bit odd, because an enforcement case was opened against Viridor in February 2018. That case remains live.

In March 2022, Viridor sold its landfill sites, including Beddington, to an Isle of Man-based company, Frank Solutions Ltd. It renamed Viridor Waste Management Ltd as Valencia Waste Management Ltd.

While Viridor failed spectacularly to complete the restoration, Valencia were even more lax.

Sutton issued Valencia with a letter before action – a legal yellow card – in May 2023, threatening an injunction to force the completion of the restoration.

This spurred Valencia into action, but not to discharge their duties over the Farmlands, but instead to try to find legal and planning loopholes so that they would not have to do anything. Valencia sought pre-application advice from the planning authority – Sutton Council – to change the terms of the restoration.

Why wait?: independent councillor Tim Foster, from Beddington ward, was one of several who called for immediate enforcement action

The existing plan, according to Valencia, was unviable and not deliverable. At the HEB committee, Spencer Palmer, Sutton Council’s “strategic director of housing, environment and neighbourhoods” made Valencia’s case for them, almost as if he was representing them, rather than the people who pay his wages.

The restoration plan could not work, Palmer said Valencia claimed, “due to concerns over the acid grassland habitats and the challenge of delivering that without risking the Wandle chalk stream”.

According to Andy Webber, Sutton Council’s planning supremo, enforcement action would be unwise, as Valencia was seeking amended planning permission, and a further four months should give Valencia time to deliver an acceptable plan. “Given that Valencia have so far delivered nothing in nearly three years, this seems fanciful,” according to one attendee at the meeting. The cynicism seemed entirely justified.

The restoration schedule, as agreed, includes 190 tasks to be undertaken by the landowners. Webber confirmed that Valencia had done nothing with 80% of them. Webber also admitted that the quality of the work undertaken so far was “substandard”. In fact, it emerged that Sutton Council had to audit the work itself, as Valencia failed to deliver a promised report.

Transformational: the plan for Beddington Farmlands, which Viridor, now Valencia, have treated with contempt

The report to the committee added that there was “considerable doubt” that Valencia was committed to the project. They had shown a “lack of urgency and real commitment”.

Valencia might have attended the committee meeting to answer councillors’ questions. They didn’t bother.

But the chair of the council’s conservation and access management committee, independent councillor Tim Foster, was happy to give councillors and officials his thoughts.

For Foster, it is a case of déjà vu all over again.

In early April 2022, Sutton Council issued a press statement that identified Viridor as taking responsibility for the restoration, despite selling the landfill to Frank Solutions Ltd, who would carry out the restoration.

The Sutton Council statement said: “Viridor has confirmed that the sale included the transfer of all staff and operations, and whilst the commitments and obligations associated with the landfill restoration would remain Viridor’s responsibility, its future management would be carried out by Frank Solutions Ltd.

“This includes the commitment to complete the Beddington Farmlands restoration and the creation of an important nature reserve.”

Sutton Council has subsequently deleted this statement from its website, without any explanation.

Statement of fact: Sutton Council posted this on its website in 2022. They have since deleted it, without any explanation

In the committee report that went before this week’s meeting, the council said the restoration was the sole responsibility of Franks Solutions Ltd’s successor, Valencia Waste Management Ltd.

When Councillor Foster drew the meeting’s attention to this apparent, and serious, contradiction, council officials did not contradict him.

Foster then raised significant issues around Viridor and Valencia supplying power to Sutton’s energy company, SDEN. It represents an obvious conflict of interest. He asked: Is this why they had not been challenged?

Despite the complete lack of progress with the promised restoration, council staff felt that Valencia should be given more time. Foster was having none of it.

“I would like this committee to empower officers to confront the failures by Valencia and Viridor,” the Beddington ward councillor said.

“There is no point in waiting for another report in March. That will be three years since Viridor sold the project from under the council’s feet, and the target species, the ecology and this borough cannot afford more excuses.

“It is time for enforcement, not discussion.”

Foster was then questioned by councillors. He does not hold Valencia in great regard. “I’ve met the shareholder of Valencia, and he wouldn’t come here tonight because he’d be swearing at us probably. It’s a very tough operation.”

‘What would happen is we refused planning permission?’: Councillor David Hicks asked the obvious question

Valencia have been working on their “Get Out of Jail Free!” plan for at least 18 months, and Sutton’s council staff suggested that another four months would see things resolved. Nobody believed it.

Valencia sacked their specialist ecological planning advisers in the summer, but now council employee Webber regaled the committee with a fairytale about how the company would bring a revised planning application that satisfied the ecological requirements to the council by January, which would then go before the planning committee in March or April.

But it isn’t really that simple. David Hicks, a Conservative councillor, asked what would happen if the council rejected the planning application?

“If we’re not satisfied and recommend refusal, we can take enforcement action,” replied Webber.

“But they could appeal,” Hicks said. “What impact could that have?”

If that happened, Webber admitted, the matter would be taken out of Sutton Council’s control, and could take months, even years, to resolve.

It was also admitted that if new planning permission was granted, the clock would be reset and a new legal agreement put in place. With a new timetable for restoration of, say, three years, wasn’t it just possible, if not certain that Valencia would simply do little for three years then wait for another threat of legal action? None of the councillors asked the obvious.

Perhaps the key reason Sutton Council does not want to begin enforcement action came in another admission from Webber, in response to a question from LibDem councillor Sam Cumber.

Reluctant enforcer: Sutton Council’s planning chief Andy Webber doesn’t seem to want to take any action against Valencia

Cumber said Valencia was “running rings” round council officials. Sutton has the smallest planning enforcement team in the whole of London, Webber revealed. “Enforcement would need additional resource, but we could recover that from Valencia,” he said.

It was then the turn of Ruth Dombey, who from 2012 had been the leader of the LibDem council while the red carpet was rolled out for Viridor.

But now, Dombey hit out at Valencia. Dombey wanted to begin enforcement action – of some kind. “One hundred and fifty-two of the tasks not completed are not dependent on the planning condition. Why do we have to wait?”

Planning is about building relationships with applicants like Valencia, Dombey continued. “But there is no relationship because they absolutely proved themselves to be arrogant, and have little intention of carrying out the works that they are legally obliged to do.”

Dombey failed to mentin the complete lack of enforcement action taken in her time as council leader. So what’s changed?

The 180-degree change in the LibDems’ approach to Valencia and the restoration was jarring, and cynics might suggest the attacks were made in the knowledge that enforcement action is not going to happen. This further begs a question of how enforceable in law the planning condition may be, given that the land to which it is attached to is still owned by Viridor for its incinerator – a point raised obliquely by Tim Foster earlier in the meeting.

Inside Sutton has asked Valencia whether it acknowledges it is now fully liable for the restoration, but has received a response of “no comment”.

Conservative councillor Vanessa Udall asked Tuesday’s meeting a simple question: what was the likely cost of the restoration project? Sutton Council’s officials must have been all over this matter in recent weeks, if not for years.

Yet incredibly, all Webber could say was, “I don’t think I have an answer for that.”

He did not even offer to find out. Maybe nobody knows?

‘Unable to determine whether adequate accounting records have been kept’

Dombey then moved on to the issue of a bond that was attached to the planning obligation. This bond was set at £1.8million, to be used by the council to finance works on the Farmlands if the landowner defaulted on the agreement. With index-linking, that could now be worth £2.5million.

But at the start of this month, Valencia claimed to the council that the bond had lapsed. Webber said that the council had given Valencia a one-week window, ending today, November 29, to reinstate the bond or face an injunction.

Bond issue:: Cllr Ruth Dombey

“A bond is a legal obligation that cannot be cancelled for any reason,” Dombey said. She also queried the meaning of the word “lapsed”. She remained adamant that the bond could not expire as Valencia hadn’t fulfilled their obligations.

“The language will be picked up by our lawyers,” Webber said, unconvincingly.

Ed Parsley, another LibDem councillor, asked if the council could publish something warning the world “exactly how [Valencia] behave, so they think before entering any contracts”. Palmer politely said he would “review that position”, which most at the meeting interpreted as the council official saying he would do nothing about it.

Councillors failed to raise Valencia’s financial position, with accounts overdue at Companies House for a second year, and a balance sheet of just £17million (Viridor took £800million out of the business when they sold it).

Last year, Valencia’s auditors said that they “were unable to determine whether adequate accounting records have been kept”, which should ring alarm bells.

Shaking response: Wendy Clark’s questions got a negative reaction from the council CEO

Only Foster touched on the somewhat incestuous relationship between the Sutton Council’s heat network company, SDEN, and its suppliers, Viridor and Valencia.

In the end, it should all come down to what elected councillors wanted paid officials to do on behalf of the people of the borough. But it got messy.

After Foster’s clear call for instant enforcement, the recommendations offered were weak and meaningless. There was a promise to inform committee members on the outcome of the bond renewal; a request to seek legal advice on enforcement for non-conditional restoration; and an undertaking to keep committee members informed of developments outside the committee cycle. Which is nice.

It all amounted to nothing more than a fudge. Just as the council officials, and Valencia, will have wanted.

As the committee chair, LibDem councillor Jake Short, tried to wind up the debate, Conservative councillor Wendy Clark added to her earlier assertion that Valencia were contemptuous of the council and that the council should take enforcement action now.  “Can we have an assurance that if we come back in March and we’re in the same position, can we just start legal proceedings straight away?” Clark asked.

No guarantee could not be offered.

Sitting right behind Clark as she made her intervention was Helen Bailey, the council’s chief executive. Bailey was shaking her head furiously.

Could this be the same Helen Bailey who was once a non-executive director of Clarion, the housing association which is about to enter a contract with SDEN? That will be the same SDEN heat network that is powered by landfill gas engines on the Farmlands owned by Valencia. It must just be coincidence, obviously.

Read more: Sutton’s ex-leader in extraordinary attack on waste company
Read more: Viridor’s charge sheet: incinerator operator’s eco-vandalism
Read more: CPRE tells Mayor Khan to make Farmlands a new public park
Read more: Beddington’s ‘blue space’ could boost NHS mental health care

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