THE cost of a legal battle over a failed Basildon waste treatment plant that was 'designed on the back of a fag packet' is running into many millions.

Essex County Council has already spent £7.5m on the dispute following its decision to quit its contract with UBB Waste Essex for its waste processing scheme at the Essex Mechanical Biological Treatment Facility facility in Basildon. It is expected to draw down a further £13m in the year up to April 2023 and another £6m after that.

And even that may not be enough. Cabinet member for waste at the authority, Cllr Malcolm Buckley, warned that "we may need to draw on substantial parts of our reserve in the future.

"It would not be proper for me to go into more detail than that but as there are other changes in the legal situation we will of course share those with opposition leaders in an appropriate manner."

When Essex council won its case, the judge, Sir Edward Pepperall said: "The fundamental problem with this project was that UBB made a number of serious design errors.

"The fundamental problem with this project was that UBB made a number of serious design errors. Its density assumptions were based on little more than calculations on the back of the proverbial fag pack such that the biohalls were seriously undersized and incapable of processing the guaranteed tonnage of waste."

In August, the county council revealed opening a £13m war chest of taxpayers' money to fund its legal battle over the failed scheme which left it being owed around £36m invested in the development.

The county council is remaining tight-lipped over the current legal position which still has not been fully resolved months after the authority won its right to terminate the contract.

The 417,000 tonne capacity plant built under a 25 year £800m contract signed in 2012 never properly worked – the county council argued that the plant was not built correctly. In 2017, the county council started court proceedings which were ruled in its favour last year. UBB Essex went into administration shortly after.

Subsequently, all deliveries of waste into the facility that had been accepting around 270,000 tonnes of black bag waste a year to be processed, avoiding the need for landfill disposal, were suspended.