A health board is spending a massive £250,000 a month to get rid of clinical waste – as a company awarded a £100million contract to destroy it is still awaiting planning permission.
The figures emerged in board papers showing that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde must also make cuts of £75million this financial year.
Health boards have faced clinical waste issues since the firm that previously disposed of it, Healthcare Environmental Services, was hit by a UK-wide scandal last year.
The Scottish Government gave the new waste contract to Tradebe Healthcare.
It was set to begin work in April but this was delayed to August 2 and has now been put back again as North Lanarkshire Council hasn’t given the go-ahead for its treatment facility in Bellshill to become fully operational.
It emerged last year that HES had allowed huge stockpiles of human waste to build up. It was stripped of its NHS contracts and ceased trading in December, making 150 of its Scottish staff redundant.
NHSGGC said it had allocated an extra £1million to cover disposal costs in 2019-20 but said this was no longer enough.
Local MSP Monica Lennon has questioned why the former HES incineration site in Shotts, which is still functional, could not have been used instead.
She said: “This state of affairs is simply not good enough.”
