A SCOTTISH NHS contractor is at the centre of a national incident after it stockpiled hundreds of tonnes of human body parts and waste.
Shotts-based Healthcare Environmental Services Ltd (HES), owned by Scottish businessman Garry Pettigrew, holds the contract for around 20% of the healthcare waste disposal market in England and Wales, and the sole contract servicing all NHS hospital sites in Scotland. According to leaked documents seen by trade magazine, Health Services Journal, at HES’s Normanton site, excess waste levels had reached 350 tonnes in September, five times more than the company’s 70 tonne limit.
The firm says a lack of incineration capacity has led to amputated limbs, infectious liquids, cytotoxic waste linked to cancer treatment, hazardous pharmaceutical waste and waste material building up to unsustainable levels
The Environment Agency has now launched a criminal investigation. It is understood the trusts affected may have to store their own waste at hospitals in special trailers.
The Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock chaired a meeting of the Government’s emergency Cobra. He ordered £1 million to be earmarked to help up to 50 NHS trusts.
Affected trusts are understood to include Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals Trust, Calderdale and Huddersfield Foundation Trust, Northern Lincolnshire and Goole FT, Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust, and East and North Hertfordshire Trust. In the last year, the Environment Agency has served 13 warning notices and two “compliance notices” on HES for not disposing of waste within regulatory time frames.
It collects around 584 tonnes of “incineration-only” waste and 1972 tonnes of non-hazardous waste per month from trusts.
In a statement, a spokesman for the company said: “Healthcare Environmental has highlighted the reduction in the UK’s high-temperature incineration capacity for the last few years. This is down to the ageing infrastructure, prolonged breakdowns and the reliance on zero waste to landfill policies, taking up the limited high-temperature incineration capacity in the market.
"Over the last year, this reduced incineration capacity has been evident across all of the industry and has affected all companies.
“We are working closely with our various disposal sites, including utilising our own £13m new waste to energy facility to reduce the volume on site whilst maintaining services.”
An Environment Agency spokeswoman said: “The Environment Agency has found Health Environmental Services to be in breach of its environmental permits at five sites which deal with clinical waste.
“We are taking enforcement action against the operator, which includes clearance of the excess waste, and have launched a criminal investigation.
“We are supporting the Government and the NHS to ensure there is no disruption to public services and for alternative plans to be put in place for hospitals affected to dispose of their waste safely.”
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