The recommendation, for a committee meeting this Friday (24 March) has prompted a strong response from the developer, Powerfuel Portland, which claims the report has “serious errors and misrepresentations”.
The Dorset case officer, Felicity Hart, says that the proposed development is not on a site with the area’s waste plan and is not close to the areas in Dorset where the main residual waste generation takes place.
Describing the Portland project as “an unsustainable form of waste management” because other waste facilities could not be co-located with it, the report also says there would be adverse heritage and landscape impacts.
Powerfuel Portland had also proposed to boost tonnages at the plant by importing RDF to the energy from waste plant by ship and also export bottom ash by ship. However, the council report says that “neither of these aspirations can be guaranteed”.
Natural England also highlighted concerns about the project but the Environment Agency has not made objections.
‘Disappointed’
Giles Frampton, director of Powerfuel Portland, said: “We are disappointed with the Planning Officer’s recommendation. This project is clearly in line with local and national policy, is badly needed to solve Dorset’s waste issue and will ensure shore power can be provided to Portland Port, safeguarding the cruise business that contributed £8m to the Dorset economy in 2021.
“Since August 2022, new technical input on Landscape and Heritage has been sought, the key areas that are now used to justify the refusal recommendation. The Report is highly selective in its reporting, ignoring previous senior officer input that did not raise concerns on these areas and therefore did not support the targeted conclusion to refuse. There are a number of other serious errors, misrepresentations and omissions with the report.”
Mr Frampton added: “We will be explaining this in detail at Committee and we trust that Committee Members will be capable of taking a balanced, independent and rational view that is based on facts and complete information when they consider the application.”
Powerfuel Portland submitted its application (reference number WP/20/00692/DCC) for a 183,000 tonne per annum (maximum 202,000 tonnes per annum) 15MWe Energy Recovery Facility (ERF) in September 2020. The company says it is “a local company with an office in Dorset”.
Powerfuel announced its plans to build the £100 million plant on the Isle of Portland in December 2019 (see letsrecycle.com story).
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