We reviewed Departmental data on municipal waste and the current and future PFI projects. We also worked with the Department to undertake scenario analysis to assess the impact of non delivery or late delivery of infrastructure on the EU landfill targets. We also analysed municipal waste statistics in order to draw comparisons between local authorities with no PFI projects and with PFI projects at various stages of development.
Statistical tests were conducted to compare amounts of waste sent to landfill by groups of authorities with PFI projects at different stages of development. Since the differences are not normally distributed, nonparametric tests were applied. In all cases a 95 per cent confidence level was used. We also compared authorities with projects in procurement and at an earlier stage of development (those that have submitted outline business cases to the Department for review and with those that had expressed an interest in PFI but have not yet submitted a business case) to authorities with currently signed projects. The difference was significant (p<0.05) when comparing authorities with projects in procurement, with signed projects, but no other significant relationships were found. This difference is unlikely to reflect the fact that those authorities with PFI contracts are already delivering landfill diversion as most projects are not yet complete and can therefore be reasonably taken to indicate a difference in the size of authorities now coming through the PFI programme, compared to those that have previously let contracts.