FM Conway was forced to seek retrospective planning permission for its aggregates crushing facility after council officers discovered permission granted for the site to be used for general industrial purposes did not cover the aggregates crushing activity.
Following a meeting with council planners on the March 22, FM Conway has had retrospective permission granted for a drainage treatment plant at the Braeburn Park site “with stringent conditions”. But, the company was denied permission for the aggregate crushing plant on the same site.
” Although this facility has the benefit of a permit from Dartford borough council, in our view it does not have planning permission.“
– Kent county council
Cllr John London, chairman of Kent's planning applications committee, said: “The committee twice visited the FM Conway works and carefully considered the views of local residents as well as the planning arguments before making its decisions in these complicated cases.”
In a statement, Kent county council said FM Conway had not shown that the crusher was the best practicable environmental option or that there was an “overriding need” for the plant. The council also said the company had not shown that “dust emissions would not have a harmful impact on local amenities”.
Permission
Kent originally discovered that planning permission for the facility was not properly in place while investigating complaints from nearby residents over the noise and dust emanating from the site.
FM Conway believed that the aggregate crushing plant did not need planning permission separate from the broader planning approval received for the site in 2002. The company had received approval for re-development of the site for a general industrial/storage use from Dartford borough council.
However, Kent county council ruled: “Although this facility has the benefit of a permit from Dartford borough council, in our view it does not have planning permission.”
” We have been granted permission for two thirds of what we have been requesting and we will be reviewing our position on the final third before deciding what to do.“
– Andrew Holmes, FM Conway
Appeal
Commenting on the decision today, FM Conway told letsrecycle.com it was happy with the verdict – despite not receiving full planning permission – but would be appealing the ruling on the aggregates plant.
Andrew Holmes, business development manager at FM Conway, said: “We are very pleased with the outcome. We have been granted permission for two thirds of what we have been requesting and we will be reviewing our position on the final third before deciding what to do.
“We are confident of getting a result whatever route we take,” Mr Holmes added.
There is growing pressure on producers and consumers to move towards reducing the consumption of primary aggregates through switching to recycled or secondary aggregates.
About 275 million tonnes of aggregates are used each year in the UK as raw construction materials, with only 65 million tonnes derived from recycled or secondary sources. Every year 90 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste is generated – more than three times the weight of waste produced by UK households.
Building products firm FM Conway invested 3.75 million last year to boost its aggregates recycling activities (see letsrecycle.com story), and has the capacity to recycle up to 150,000 tonnes of construction waste each year at the Braeburn Park site.
Closed loop
The company crushes and washes materials from building contractors, which can then be returned for reuse by the waste producers in a “closed loop” system.
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FM Conway first tried recycling concrete in the mid 1990s but was forced to stop because of a lack of demand for recycled material from its clients. In recent years, the company has worked with market development organisation London Remade to boost the acceptance of its recycled products within the construction sector – as part of the Mayor's Green Procurement Code.
Mr Holmes said: “We now have customers who are happy to take recycled concrete and we have employed some equipment which is unique to the UK in order to get this site to where it is now.”
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