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Waste transfer site up for refusal
Dec 18, 2002
CONTROVERSIAL plans for a waste transfer station and recycling site at Stainton Grove are being recommended for refusal at county hall this afternoon (Wednesday).County councillors making a site visit earlier this afternoon are set to be met with a peaceful protest by Stainton Grove residents, who pledged, after a meeting on Friday, to also attend Teesdale Council today when a report into the transfer station will be heard behind closed doors.
Protester, Ruth Renton, told the Mercury that the private hearing was just compounding mistakes made by Teesdale Council. “We will be there and we do not like being asked to leave,” she said.
The county recommendation was “wonderful,” she said. “It is the right decision and I hope that county councillors will take this advice because it has always been the wrong site. Protest does work. At long last people’s voices can be heard.”
Peter Wilkinson, who lives locally, has been given a 15-minute slot to speak for the residents at the county council meeting, over the application from Premier Waste Management Ltd.
John Suckling, county head of planning, is telling the county council that the proposal should not be approved unless members are “satisfied that the benefits outweigh any environmental harm and that the need cannot be met from an alternative, less sensitive site.”
If approval is given, the plan must then be referred to the Secretary of State for the Environment, he warns, because it will be against planning policy.
The facility is needed “and in operational terms, Stainton Grove offers the best general location of the options considered,” he says. “However, these benefits must be weighed against the impact on the surrounding area, with the associated loss of a greenfield site, and its tree cover, in this location in the countryside and in an Area of High Landscape Value, contrary to adopted development plan policies.”
In June, Teesdale councillors also recommended the planning application be rejected. But the council has found itself in hot water with residents – and some of its own members – when in March 01 it had supported the principle of a Stainton Grove site out of seven possibilities.
This issue was picked up by Coun Newton Wood and became subject to an internal scrutiny in Teesdale Council. He said: “Now that the scrutiny committee has clearly shown that mistakes have clearly been made, and that Durham County Council has a recommendation that they reject this application, one has to ask how could Teesdale District Council’s planning department recommend approval using the same planning criteria?
“I am not surprised with the recommendation because that is why I asked my questions in the first place, because the site is so unsuitable. It is always quoted as being in an industrial area, but it is in a housing area as well. It is therefore, a unique place to situate a waste station.”