One of the authority’s two waste transfer stations, Cringle Dock is located on the River Thames to the east of Battersea, and primarily handles municipal waste from four London boroughs: Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, Lambeth and Wandsworth.
The waste transfer station, situated next to Battersea Power Station, which was built in the 1970s currently deals with 260,000 tonnes of waste a year – containerising over 5,000 tonnes of refuse every week.
The waste is compacted on site and loaded onto barges, after which it is transported to the Energy from Waste (EfW) facility at Belvedere, in the London Borough of Bexley, which is operated by Cory Environmental. Belvedere is the largest EfW facility in the UK and one of the largest in Europe, which will eventually generate up to 72MW of power.
Cringle Dock is one of fifty safeguarded wharves located on the River Thames allocated for the handling of cargo by barge.
Application
The planning application was submitted together with the Battersea Power Station Development Company (BPSDC) in November, and was approved last month (July).
According to the WRWA, the application is aimed at securing “a sustainable long term future for our Cringle Dock Waste Transfer Station in Battersea,” by redeveloping the area to provide a modern waste transfer station and additional new homes for the Vauxhall Nine Elms area.
The authority said the current waste transfer station has become outdated, and the “environmental impacts, including odour, could lead to difficulties for the site’s continued operation once residents start to move into the new homes planned around it.”
Homes
The WRWA’s outline document says: “The innovative solution is to build a new waste transfer station and enclose it within a box, thus providing the best means to mitigate its environmental impact. To fund this, new homes will be built above the box, helping to integrate the site into neighbouring developments.”
A temporary waste transfer station will be required during the construction of the new facility, and the WRWA and BPSDC have submitted a separate planning application for his temporary station.
The cost of rebuilding the new transfer stations would be met by enabling some of the WRWA land to be used for the creation of 422 new homes, the Authority claims.
This is the second proposal in London to develop a residential scheme above a working wharf, the first being Albert Wharf, adjacent to Wandsworth Bridge and approved by Hammersmith & Fulham in 2015.
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