The Environment Agency needs to be more positive in its responses to applications for the development of recycling facilities rather than simply saying no objection, a senior waste industry planner said this week.
The call for the Agency to adopt a positive stance in line with the aims of the waste hierarchy came from Jeff Rhodes, planning and permitting manager for the Biffa Group, and who also chairs the Environmental Services Associations planning committee.
“It would be nice if the response came back with some positive comments”
Jeff Rhodes, Biffa
Speaking at a Crestwood Environmental planning conference in Wolverhampton on Wednesday (April 18) Mr Rhodes discussed the pros and cons of twin-tracking permit and planning applications for plants.
And, commenting on the difficulties in securing planning permission for some plants, he said: With the Environment Agency on planning consultations the best you can normally get is no objections, but if you are putting in a planning application for a recycling facility to try and move waste up the waste hierarchy – which is obviously very much in tune with the policy objectives of the Environment Agency – it would be nice if the response came back with some positive comments on the policy objectives rather than just technical ones on the equipment side. So that is a bit of a missed opportunity I think.
He emphasised how there was a need for experts and local councillors to support facilities as the industry continued to face local opposition to recycling plants although it was happy to fully follow consultation rules.
On the parallel processing of planning and permit applications, Mr Rhodes said this was not a new concept in waste planning and that Biffa had been advocating it and so had the Agency in 2002 documents and DCLG and Defra in 2006.
Pros and Cons
“At Biffa we usually do this for major projects and for minor ones if there are specific issues that cut across. There are pros and cons to parallel processing and it is important it remains an option, not a legal requirement, said Mr Rhodes who went on to identify some of the pros and cons.
He said the pros included using the same consultants and potentially lower costs although there was a risk of additional costs, the scope of issues and evidence could be reduced at planning stage and the technical work for the permit can help address public concerns on pollution and health issues at planning stage.
The cons include, explained Mr Rhodes, more expenditure upfront for permit work ahead of planning permission and the potential for mixing up of issues instead of getting clarity. It also needs the waste planning authority and the Environment Agency to work closely together and to recognise their borders and different administration processes for planning and permitting can cause confusion and run at different speeds.
Overall I would say there are more pros than cons. In most cases the environmental permit cant be issued until planning is in place although curiously this doesn’t apply to incineration as these are covered by the Incineration Directive which is quite useful given the preponderance for them to end up at planning appeal,” he said.
Giving examples of projects which have been twin-tracked, Mr Rhodes said the Poplars anaerobic digestion facility was one example. “This was a merchant facility and was twin-tracked. At his helped address some of the concerns of local people and helped to speed up the planning process.”
Defra
One official view at the conference on the waste side came from John Galvin, the waste regulation and crime team leader within Defra.
He appeared to indicate that Defra may take a tougher line on the waste hierarchy at some point in the future. Commenting on its legal footing, he said: “The waste hierarchy is now a priority consideration for anyone handling waste there is a big debate whether the legal footing will bring the changes we want to bring about, to prevent waste and to prepare for reuse, recycle, recover etc and time will tell on that whether we need to have further developments.
“We are going to look at other approaches to compliance rather than strict adherence to permit conditions”
John Galvin, Defra
On permits, Mr Galvin said: We are going to look at other approaches to compliance rather than strict adherence to permit conditions. We are currently doing some work with the BSI on alternative standards and third party accreditations which will allow operators to demonstrate compliance with the permit without the need for the same level of need for input from the Environment Agency.
DCLG
The event was also addressed by Mark Plummer, team leader for minerals and waste planning in the Department for Communities and Local Government.
Mr Plummer explained that there had been a huge change in philosophical approach with the new government with the idea that policies had moved decision making to as close as possible to the people affected.
On localism he remarked that waste and mineral planning authorities should cooperate and that consideration was being made on whether to issue guidance on this. And, there should also be pre-application consultations.
He explained that the National Planning Policy Framework published at the end of March 2012 is one of the key commitments of the Coalition and saw 1,000 pages of planning reduced to a consolidation of policies.
This includes core principles for the planning system, he said. But, it is not a call for every community to do what it wants, he emphasised. There are clearly defined parameters. This is not localism, it is constrained localism.
Mr Plummer also noted that waste projects can be seen as supporting economic development and also noted that in terms of design, waste has a role in securing high quality design.
Agency
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The final speaker at the conference was Maggie Dutton from the Environment Agency. She explained that the Agency had responded to the Red Tape challenge and was going to improve its permitting performance further.
And she said that the Agency is also investigating an intermediate tier if a particular activity misses standard rules we may look at a simple bespoke.
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