Mayor of Enfield under fire as incinerator opponents prepare to march again

With only four days to go before the contract to build the new Edmonton Incinerator is due to be signed, councillors from the Green Party and Liberal Democrats have criticised the Mayor of Enfield, accusing him of unnecessarily delaying the date of a council meeting to discuss the contract, meaning that it will take place too late to stop contract signature. Meanwhile, the broadbased coalition which unites members of more than 50 campaign groups and opposes the new incinerator is making preparations for what is likely to be the biggest protest yet, a "family-friendly" march on Sunday afternoon from Edmonton Green to the misleadingly named "Eco Park" along the North Circular Road.

flyer for stop edmonton incinerator march

The Stop the Edmonton Incinerator campaign says that Sunday's socially distanced march is the "first of many actions making clear that councillors will feel the consequences of their decisions at the forthcoming elections in May 2022". It calls for a pause and review of the project on the grounds that:

The incinerator will be the biggest source of carbon emissions in north London, predicted to emit 700,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, at a time when the climate emergency requires drastic reductions in these emissions.
Toxic pollution from the incinerator will cause life-shortening illnesses for Edmonton residents, continuing the environmental racism and social injustice that the local community has been subjected to for years.
The NLWA and councils have failed to look properly at alternatives (so far only Haringey has called for a pause and review), and there is an obvious conflict of interest at the NLWA, as the chair and two senior staff are also directors of the private company, London Energy Ltd, which stands to benefit from a new incinerator.
North London has some of the lowest recycling rates in the country. There is huge scope to reduce, reuse and recycle much more of our black bag waste instead of burning it. The enormous amount of money to be invested in the incinerator should be used to create a modern waste management system.
The NLWA has failed to inform people in Edmonton and the wider area about the incinerator rebuild, rightly fearing that openness and scrutiny would allow local people to express their resistance to the new incinerator.
The Mayor of London’s office estimates that London will have 250,000 tonnes of surplus energy-from-waste incineration capacity in the near future. And current national plans mean that 50 new incinerators will be in operation in the UK by 2030. This will double the national incineration capacity and lock us into an additional 10 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year.
Even the CEO of the Spanish firm due to build the incinerator has recognised that the Edmonton plant will be massively oversized and has questioned the need for more incineration capacity in London.

Read the campaign's latest press release

Mayor's delayed response to messages from residents

On 4th January campaigners appealed to supporters to contact the mayor, Cllr Sabri Ozaydin, asking him to call an extraordinary council meeting on a date earlier than 18th January, when the contract between the North London Waste Authority (NLWA) and Spanish contractor Acciona is to be signed. The meeting, to debate a motion to suspend support for the contract submitted by Green councillor Charith Gunawardena, had been requested by Cllr Gunawardena and other members of the Community First group of councillors.

To comply with regulations about giving notice of meetings, the Mayor needed to act by 7th January. However, residents who wrote to the mayor - in many cases as early as 5th or 6th January - did not receive any response until 13th January. In his letter Cllr Ozaydin claimed that the request from the five councillors had come too late and the earliest he could convene a meeting was 26th January, the same day as the regular scheduled council meeting.

"Unnecessary and deliberate delay"

There have been angry reactions to the mayor's letter. Cllr Gunawardena, who in accordance with the constitution could have called the meeting himself, said he was on the verge of doing so when pipped to the post by the mayor:

"The monitoring officer stated that the mayor had until 5pm on Tuesday 11th to give him an answer. At that point I would have been able to call the EGM myself without further input from the Mayor. At 4.15 on the 11th the monitoring officer asked me whether I wanted to go ahead if the mayor didn’t respond. I confirmed that I would call for the meeting myself. Shortly after that, within 15 minutes, the Mayor agreed to call it. There was no reason or purpose for the mayor to delay his decision except to run down the clock. Sadly, residents of Enfield have been badly let down by this unnecessary and deliberate delay."

"By acting in a party political manner he has eroded local democracy"

Liberal Democrat councillor Ayfer Orhan, another Community First member, said:

“The mayor could have called an extraordinary council meeting at any time and absolutely should have done so the moment my councillor colleagues requested that he do so, let alone when so many concerned local residents wrote in asking him to do this.

“The fact that he then went on to incorrectly state the rules when writing to local people about his reasons for not acting when it could have made the difference has seriously called into question his ability to act in the impartial, civic role the Council has elected him to. The role of mayor is an independent one and I believe by acting in a party political manner he has eroded local democracy and compromised the role of mayor."

"Patently false"

The strongest reaction to the mayor's actions has come from another Lib Dem, Matt McLaren, a prospective candidate in Winchmore Hill ward. In a letter sent today, he accuses the mayor of including a "patently false" statement in his response to residents' emails, quoting from the council's constitution to support his argument that the mayor could have called an extraordinary meeting immediately after the councillors submitted their request on 4th January and residents wrote to him on 6th January, meaning that Cllr Gunawardena's motion could have been debated prior to the date when the contract is due to be signed.

Matt McLaren goes on to say that "I can only assume that you are acting as a pawn of the Labour administration in pursuit of its policy objective of securing the NWLA approved incinerator" and to suggest that the mayor may be in breach of the code of conduct applying to all councillors, specifically the requirements for openness and honesty.