WESTBURY Town Council says it “regrets” that Wiltshire Council has earmarked three waste sites for Westbury.
The Lafarge site, West Wilts Trading Estate, and Northacre Trading Estate are all included in Wiltshire Council consultation as “strategic” sites – possible sites for large and more specialist waste facilities, to deal with larger quantities of waste from a wider catchment area.
The consultation has highlighted a total of 14 possible strategic sites in the county. The three sites considered for Westbury are in addition to Westbury’s Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) plant on the Northacre Trading Estate. Construction of the MBT plant, which will treat 60,000 tonnes of household waste, is expected to start in August this year.
At the meeting of Westbury Town Council’s highways, planning and development committee on Monday 18th July the council said they “regret” the “disproportionate allocation” of waste sites for the town. While councillors recognise that the type of sites would not be for landfill or burning waste, they have still raised concerns over the amount of extra traffic the waste sites would bring to the town.
Possible uses for the three other sites of Lafarge, West Wilts Trading Estate and Northacre Trading Estate include:
• Waste treatment – facilities for the treatment of waste which could include mechanical biological treatment, anaerobic digestion, energy from waste.
• Materials recovery facility – collecting, separating, sorting and bulking a wide range of waste materials prior to transfer
• Waste Transfer Station – a depot where waste is deposited, sorted, bulked and then transferred.
• Local recycling – collecting, storing, and bulking particular waste materials prior to transfer, which can include metal recycling, car de-pollution, and waste electrical and electronic equipment facilities.
• Household Recycling Centre (proposed at West Wilts Trading Estate or Lafarge) – public facilities, where household waste can be taken for recycling.
The proposals come as part of Wiltshire Council’s “Proposed Submission Draft Waste Site Allocations Development Plan Document”, which is currently out for public consultation. The consultation considers a total of 43 waste sites across the county, consisting of 14 “strategic” sites (large and more specialist facilities in terms of scale and quantity of waste) and 29 smaller “local” sites for waste sourced from a limited geographical catchment.
Wiltshire Council say the plan marks a clear shift from a reliance on using landfill sites to dispose of waste, adopting cleaner and cheaper ways of disposing of waste. Due to the ever-increasing cost of sending waste to landfill, the council must adopt a plan which puts forward sites suitable for alternative ways of disposing waste. Wiltshire Council is currently charged £48 per tonne of waste it sends to landfill, but this is set to rise dramatically over the coming years.
A Wiltshire Council spokesperson has offered assurance that, “If an application for a waste management facility is received on any of these sites, including those in Westbury, then it will go through an open and transparent planning process. Similar facilities already in the area or ones planned for the future, as well as issues like traffic, would be taken into consideration. As with all planning applications, people would have the opportunity to object.”
