WESTBURY’S Gasification Action Group vow to ‘carry on as normal’ with their petition urging Wiltshire Council to reconsider the planning application for a waste treatment plant, despite the council having no plans to review the decision.
The petition, set up by Westbury Gasification Action Group member, Maggy Daniell, stated their aims as, “For Wiltshire Council to reconsider its approval of the proposed incinerator at Northacre, Westbury, and the extent to which its waste strategy relies on incineration.
“We believe the council will be failing in its duty if it does not require a new full planning application, including environmental and health impact assessments, as the technology inputs to and layout of the plant have become too significant a variation from those approved in 2015, and its own policies state that the finer particulates likely to be emitted are harmful to human health.
“We expect the council to look at the whole picture and devise a waste strategy which aims to reduce tonnage of unrecyclable waste, and to renegotiate its waste contracts to promote re-use and recycling and avoid the building of an unnecessary new incinerator.”
In response to this epetition, Wiltshire Council wrote to Maggy Daniell saying, “The council has no plans to review the planning permission granted in 2015 for an advanced thermal treatment facility at Stephenson Road on the Northacre Trading Estate at Westbury.
“The decision to grant planning permission was made after a full assessment of the relevant planning considerations and the company can implement this permission if they wish to do so. If the company wish to make any material change to their planning permission, then that will be consulted on and evaluated on its own merits as and when any such planning application is received by the council.
“Health impact assessments are not a statutory requirement of the planning consultation process, and in this case will be addressed as part of another regulatory regime which controls certain activities which could harm the environment or human health. The proposed gasification facility is not an incinerator. “
Following Wiltshire Council’s response, Maggy said, “The letter has not made any difference, it was bland, full of council speech and doesn’t address the idea. We still think that too much has changed from the original planning application to allow it to continue.
“We will continue our protest in due course and continue collecting paper signatures until the petition closes on Monday 5th March. The council seem constrained by their own policy and cannot think coherently as one entity and this is a real shame. Our group will carry on as normal, gathering more and more signatures to fight this. It just shows the strength of feeling, people are really getting behind it.
“We accept that planning is a separate part and also accept that they will go ahead with the section 73, but as more and more people learn about this, the stronger we get.”
