The way forward for waste planning

There has been a history of tension between upper tier planning authorities, such as counties, and districts on strategic issues like waste management.

This in itself is perhaps a mirror of the ‘local disconnect between communities and waste planning issues. While communities may be unhappy about planning applications for most forms of development, such as housing, school or office construction, they appreciate that there is at least an argument that all areas need to accommodate such developments.

Communities, district councils and local politicians perhaps do not appreciate the full implications or scale of the move to sustainable waste management. This is in part because of the UKs out of sight, out of mind historic reliance on landfill. I frequently hear arguments framed about where the new waste facility over the next 15 years will be required in the county, rather than an appreciation that a typical rural-urban county will see applications for 50+ waste facilities a year.

Likewise, communities that do have a waste facility on one of their business parks feel that any further schemes will mean that they are bearing a disproportionate burden of waste management sites. Without stating the obvious, local communities also feel that waste can be somehow dealt with somewhere else. In the last year I have met objectors with placards reading things like No waste here.

These issues set us up for conflict particularly when combined with government messages on the Duty to Cooperate, moving waste up the hierarchy, the economic growth agenda (including infrastructure to maintain competitiveness of all businesses) and the requirement to use the planning system positively.

PPS10 (Planning Policy Statement 10 on waste management) states unambiguously that waste facilities can go on employment land. However many districts resist applications/allocations on the basis that while they accept the PPS10 guidance as a general principle, they argue that business park X is one of their priority sites for inward investment and that they need to reserve it for high quality uses. The we need a site in case Microsoft want a new European headquarters scenario. The problem is that this idea is extended to cover all business parks in a given district.

While waste industry reps will give out the glossy pictures of well designed, modern waste facilities that look indistinguishable from general business park uses, districts can also point to plenty of examples of historic, poorly run local waste facilities. This is not just scrap yard type sites, but they do feature heavily in local fears.

What is the way forward?

I think it is perfectly rational for districts to state that certain business parks/industrial estates are being made the focus for high quality inward investment developments.

We have tried to move this on by putting the ball into the court of the district. We go and see them. We do a presentation to their local politicians and then give the offices a plan of all their business parks. We then say: you tell us which business parks fit into which category. The categories can be:

• Not suitable for waste uses.

• Suitable for light waste uses i.e. those indistinguishable from a conventional light engineering use in terms of impacts.

• Suitable for all waste uses.

We have found that by following this process even districts that started off by saying we have no sites suitable come round to the positive way of thinking.