Household Recycling Centre delayed due to lack of funds

There is currently no funding for a Household Recycling Centre in Westbury, according to county and town councillor David Jenkins. He also believes that funding may not be available for some time.Calls were made by town councillor Stephen Miles to push ahead with a recycling centre in a bid to reduce the problems of flytipping (White Horse News 15th March). A recycling centre was originally planned alongside Westbury’s £20million Mechanical Biological Plant (MBT). Cllr David Jenkins says, “Westbury has, since the granting of the planning permission to build a state-of-the-art MBT waste treatment plant on the Northacre Trading Estate, been waiting to find out when it will have  its Household Recycling Centre (HRC). It was understood that the HRC would be part of this new development.“The decision to significantly improve kerbside recycling collections across Wiltshire as part of the move to harmonise collections under the new council has required major capital and revenue spending. Savings have had to been made so consequently there is no funding in the waste budget for HRCs.“Wiltshire Council supports the waste strategy and continues to support the provision HRCs and the case for a HRC in Westbury is in one of the prime locations identified In fact it could not be more suitably located right next to the MBT waste plant.“In the next financial year 2012-2013 the waste service will commence work on a project for future service delivery. This will include procuring a new contract, the existing one will terminate in 2016. The provision and funding of the HRCs in the longer term will form part of this project.“The planning application and planning permission clearly includes provision of the HRCs. However neither document contains a requirement to build or open the HRC at the same time as the MBT.“The MBT is under construction and has yet to go through what will I’m sure will be an extensive commissioning period. It is only then for various reasons such as health and safety that I would think that the site would be safe to install a HRC.“This is a facility that is important to the community of the Westbury area. It’s long overdue and it needs to be made available as soon as practicably possible.”