Race Cottam Associates - General Other - Berkshire,

Date: 18 Jun 2008

South Yorkshire architects have produced the winning designs for a multi-million pound waste management project in Berkshire.

Environmental design specialists Race Cottam Associates have been chosen to deliver the buildings for the £600 million Private Finance Initiative (PFI) scheme which will further reduce reliance on landfill and increase recycling rates in three council areas.

The 25-year joint venture between Reading Borough Council, Bracknell Forest Borough Council and Wokingham District Council - known as the RE3 Waste Partnership - aims to deliver a long-term sustainable solution to dealing with waste produced by households in the three council areas.

Waste Recycling Group (WRG), the UK's leading waste management services and energy recovery company, has been chosen by the RE3 Waste Partnership to deliver the new waste strategy.

And an architectural team at Race Cottam has designed the new waste management facilities being constructed at the Smallmead site in Reading and at Longshot Lane, Bracknell.

Both schemes feature redeveloped indoor civic amenity sites, new waste transfer stations along with visitor and education centres. Smallmead also boasts a state-of-the-art, 50,000 sq ft materials recycling plant.

The groundbreaking contract will include greater capacity for recycling and composting of green waste and energy from waste.

Race Cottam Regional Director David Speddings said: "We have produced designs for similar facilities across the country but this is the largest such contract we have secured.

"We are using high quality materials for these very large buildings which will provide a very clean, modern public amenity site where people can recycle everything from computers to garden waste."

The new sites will allow the partnership councils to achieve high levels of recycling and composting performance over a 25-year period while achieving lower landfill diversion targets set by central Government.

The architectural team is working in partnership with Earth Tech UK and Clugston Construction to deliver the buildings.

Race Cottam. which has studios in Sheffield and Knutsford, has a growing national reputation for the design and delivery of significant waste projects.

It was recently appointed by Cory Environmental's Riverside Resource Recovery Ltd subsidiary to take over architectural design services for the largest waste treatment facility ever built in Britain.

The £250 million energy-from-waste (EfW) plant will be built at Bexley, on the south bank of the Thames, and will burn up to 670,000 tonnes of waste a year for 30 years.