CONFIDENTIAL documents released by Scottish Borders Council offer “further compelling evidence” that its deal with a private company to bring a £21m waste treatment plant to Easter Langlee should have been scrapped long before it was.

That is the assessment of retired Borders journalist Bill Chisholm who has been seeking disclosure, via Freedom of Information legislation, of all reports pertaining to a contract which was finally abandoned in February 2015, forcing the council to write off £2.5m.

The council maintained that acceding to his requests could cause NES “commercial and reputational damage” even after the firm became insolvent last year.

But following a series of decisions in his favour – most recently in June – the Scottish Information Commissioner has ordered full disclosure, ruling it in the public interest.

Mr Chisholm said this week: “I received a CD from the council containing around 100 separate documents at the weekend.

“There’s quite a lot of information to process in this latest batch, but I can say that they provide further compelling evidence that the deal with NES should have been ditched long before SBC dumped the firm at great cost to the public purse.”

The saga goes back to March 2011, when councillors contracted NES to deliver a conventional mechanical biological treatment (MBT) plant at Easter Langlee, capable of dealing with 40,000 tonnes of household rubbish each year.

Just nine months later, NES told council officers that the MBT facility – without an incineration based advanced thermal treatment (ATT) element which would convert gas from waste into electricity – could no longer get bank funding.

In October, 2012, councillors met in private and agreed to legally vary the contract in these terms – a month before trials of the ATT technology had even started at the company’s research and development centre in Dorset.

The newly-released documents reveal that NES told the council in December 2012 that “technical issues” had necessitated a shut down of the plant during these trials.

“That was the first of a catalogue of hitches and delays involving misfiring technology which were reported in monthly updates to the council’s project team,” said Mr Chisholm.

“Alarm bells should also have been ringing in respect of repeated excuses from NES over the non-appearance of cash to bankroll the job.”

It is seven years since consultants warned that to “do nothing” was not an option for the council if was to meet the 2021 Scottish Government’s zero waste deadline for a total ban on all biodegradable waste going to landfill.

After the NES contract was scrapped, the council agreed that a waste transfer station (WTS) – from where rubbish would be transported outwith the region – was the best solution.

But plans for the £5m facility, also at Easter Langlee, were rejected in April by the council’s own planning committee which determined that the traffic generated by the WTS would have an adverse road safety impact.

With the landfill site at Easter Langlee due to be decommissioned next year, the council declined to comment this week on its plans for the WTS.

There is speculation, however, that the council is preparing another planning bid for the same site.