GRAHAM FLYNN – MANAGING DIRECTOR, ANENTA, UK CLINICAL WASTE MANAGEMENT
The future of clinical waste without HES
The collapse of scandal-hit clinical waste firm Healthcare Environmental Services (HES) has once again thrown the subject of clinical waste management into sharp focus. Graham Flynn, managing director of independent healthcare waste management company Anenta, looks at how NHS England is coping with the double whammy of COVID-19 and the fallout from the HES debacle, making world-class healthcare waste hygiene more important than ever.
Producers of healthcare waste have a responsibility to ensure it is disposed of in accordance with best practice.
The clinical waste scene in the UK was in shock after Healthcare Environmental Services (HES) staff were made redundant ahead of its liquidation at the end of April 2019. To an extent, it still is. The Lanarkshire-based company had multi-million pound contracts with 17 trusts in England and with NHS Scotland. Since the initial disruption to clinical
waste disposal was first identified as a result of the reported concerns with HES more than a year ago, caused in part by limitations in incineration capacity flagged by the business, there has been a great deal of activity to resolve the backlog of waste between NHS England.
A new company called Cliniwaste has
been issued a license to clear waste from specific former HES locations alongside Mitie. Cliniwaste has bought a number of HES premises, although there is still some debate over ownership, i.e. were the administrators of HES in a position to sell assets that did not belong to HES. Regarding the waste backlog at former
HES sites, I can report that Anenta has been advised through trade associations that waste which can be traced back to the producer will be exported using transfrontier shipment (TFS) routes. Meanwhile, waste which cannot be traced back to the producer will need to be
Graham Flynn
Graham is managing director of Anenta. After serving six years as head of environmental services at the NHS, during which time he focused on the stabilisation of waste management practices
and contracts across London, Graham founded the healthcare waste management company in 2013. Combining previous business management and public sector experience, and wide
ranging technical environmental knowledge, Graham identified the potential to make greater improvements in the delivery and management of environmental services in the NHS by reducing
internal bureaucracy. Anenta works with the NHS, local authorities and care homes to deliver end-to-end waste management services.
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treated in the UK. All anatomical waste must be treated or disposed of in the UK via the appropriate route. There is, inevitably, a cost implication.
We must be mindful that the incineration tax levied in Sweden and the Netherlands is likely to become commonplace across the EU, and that Brexit will bring further increases to the price of disposal. Costs will also increase due to transport regulations requiring the use of closed transport units such as enclosed containers and rigid sided trailers. These types of vehicles for this specific use are not as commonplace as curtain sided vehicles.
NHS England is still in the process of
developing their waste strategy which, as we understand it, seeks to redefine the utilisation and standard perceptions of the current clinical waste market to create opportunities for new entrants and SMEs. It has taken some time to gain traction
on resolving the disposal capacity issues as reported in Anenta’s 2019 waste market report.1
However, innovative solutions are
coming to the fore along with investment into the old infrastructure such as at Hillingdon Hospital’s NHS Foundation Trusts, where a bid notice states that the incinerator has recently been refurbished.
IFHE DIGEST 2021
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