The application for the facility was submitted by Peak Associates on behalf of Manchester Recycling Ltd. It was seeking a standard rules permit for a facility that would handle “skips and wastes brought in on flat bed vehicles from things like landscaping, extensions and kitchen refitting, which would be sorted into onward streams for recycling and recovery”.
In a notice published on Monday (2 October) the Agency explained that its officers visited the site in December 2021, seven months after the application was first made.
Officers noted, according to the Agency, that the site area already contained an estimated 30,000m3 of historically deposited mixed waste material.
“To comply with the standard rules permit, the waste would need to be stored within a building and due to its composition potentially be inappropriate for storage or treatment under this standard rules.”
The Agency added that suitable infrastructure would need to be installed before the Environment Agency could consider granting the standard rules Permit. Without suitable infrastructure this would lead to an immediate breach of permit.
The regulator also noted that the Fire Prevention Plan had “several areas” which were inadequate, and said: “Consequently, the Agency considers that it must refuse the application.”
Condition
Mike Matthews, managing director of Peak Associates, criticised the decision.
He said: ” We are a bit annoyed with the Agency in that this site is actually full of unsorted waste at the moment and the proposal rejected simply involves the suggestion that a condition requiring the site to be removed before the permit becomes operational can be added to the ‘front end’ as a precondition to a permit otherwise containing standard rules.
“We have made it clear that the testing and manner of clearing the site will need to be approved by the Environment Agency but all the new operator requires from the lenders involved is the certainty of a permit for the business (and planning approval) before they release funds to clear the site.
“Such preconditions have of course been part and parcel of the planning system for decades so the EA should not be unfamiliar with them. But we have paid for barrister specialising in regulatory matters to point out where and how such a condition can be inserted in the 2016 Permitting Regulations. Why wouldn’t you use such conditions to make sure sites are fit for use before operations begin?”
Standard rules
Standard rules permits are a set of fixed rules for common activities.
They contain one condition which refers to a fixed set (or sets) of standard rules that an operator must comply with. The standard rules define the activities that an operator can carry out and specify necessary restrictions on those activities, such as emission limits or the types of waste or raw materials that can be accepted at the sites.
The Agency had softened its guidance which was to make enclosed buildings part of the standard rules for waste operations in 2021, though an enclosed building does remain an appropriate measure to control emissions but is not the default option (see letsrecycle.com story).
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