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VALE OF SUSSEX SOCIETY PUBLIC MEETING IN NEWICK TO CONSIDER THE EAST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL’S WASTE & MINERALS CORE STRATEGY CONSULTATION AND PROPOSED LAND RAISE AND WASSTE DISPOSAL FACILITY BETWEEN NEWICK AND PILTDOWN

Last night, 311 people crowded into Newick Village Hall on an icy night – 65 stood for two and a half hours - to learn about and pass judgement on East Sussex County Council’s (ESCC) proposals for a strategy to deal with household and commercial and industrial waste in the period to 2026. They came predominantly from Newick, Piltdown, Isfield, Barcombe, Chailey, Ringmer and Plumpton. The recently extended consultation period on this issue last until 15^th January.  The meeting was organised by the Vale of Sussex Society in conjunction with Newick Parish Council. The particular focus of concern was the proposal to establish a 25 hectare waste treatment facility on a hill top site to the east of Gold Bridge and south of the A272 between Newick and Piltdown.

Tony Cook, the ESCC Chief Planning Officer, opened the meeting with a presentation that sought to justify the ESCC policy. He was assisted by Andrew Woodis from Scott Wilson, the consultants who had prepared the original proposals. Mr. Cook presented forecasts that showed the increasing volume of household and commercial and industrial waste expected to arise over the next 17 years and which ESCC would have to handle – councils currently were not responsible for the disposal of commercial and industrial waste, which was double the volume of household waste. The forecasts included up to 100,000 tonnes of waste annually from London, which ESCC was required, against its better judgement that had been over-ruled, to process under the requirements of the South East Regional Plan.

East Sussex’s problem was the lack of suitable, brown field sites within which to accommodate the expected waste. Beddingham landfill site was now full and closed; Pebsham had at most capacity for only four more years. The preferred option was to use disused mineral extraction sites but East Sussex, unlike other neighbouring counties, had virtually none.  There was the Ashdown Brickworks site at Bexhill, which still was producing bricks, would become a major source for waste disposal during the course of the strategy but the precise timing was uncertain because of the need to construct a major link road to allow access by heavy lorries, which was currently in the early stages of the planning process.

ESCC therefore had no option but to seek suitable green field sites for the location of extra waste disposal facilities. In identifying possible sites, attention had been paid to geology, flood risk, damage to valued environments and transport links. An extensive search by the consultants employed by the ESCC had identified five possible sites: Newick/Piltdown, Halland, Ripe, Whitesmith and Hellingly. After the next stage of consultation, which would focus much more on local knowledge, ESCC would select tow of these sites for development. Under the Government’s new planning procedures the final stage, likely to occur in 2012, would be a Public Examination of the ESCC final proposals when the Inspector’s findings would be binding on the council.

During the course of questions to Mr. Cook, it emerged that none of the five short listed sites were without serious drawbacks.

·     The consultants had not actually visited the proposed site in Newick, much less contacted the landowner, who was particularly knowledgable about the complex mix of soils conditions on site.

·     Each site would give rise to eighty movements each day by the very largest, six axle, articulated lorries.

·     Neither the consultants nor ESCC planners had given serious consideration, when drawing up the short list, to visual impacts on nearby communities.

Stuart Meier, Sussex Director of the Council for the Protection of Rural England, next gave a presentation which was a reasoned critique of the ESCC proposals. On the overall strategy for dealing with domestic and commercial waste, he argued strongly that the priority approach was to do everything possible to reduce the expected volume of waste before it needed disposal. ESCC was not active enough in encouraging greater use of recycling and in discouraging manufacturers and retailers from using so much packaging. Nationally, the United Kingdom compared most unfavourably with other countries in its poor recycling record and over – dependence on landfill solutions to waste problems. Our record was the poorest of any OECD country and well below the EU average. Germany, which produced a significantly greater weight of household and commercial waste than the UK, had no landfill sites whatsoever. CPRE was totally opposed as a matter of principle to using any green field site for new waste disposal, land raise or land fill facilities. If other neighbouring counties such as West Sussex were blessed with more disused mineral working sites, then surely ESCC should seek to co-operate with them to help ease our waste disposal problems. 

 On the specific proposal for a waste disposal and land raise development between Newick and Piltdown, Mr. Meier pointed out that

·     The site was on the top of a hill and so the land raise, which would eventually be eighty feet high and would cover sixty acres, would be extremely visible to the inhabitants of Piltdown and to from the centre of Newick. It would not enhance the beauty of the landscape!

·     The overall site identified by the consultants was replete with fine examples of ancient woodland. Natural England’s guidelines on the preservation of such woodland, which were an essential component of our notional heritage, required that no development should occur closer than 500 metres to ancient woodland. If those national guidelines, to which ESCC had subscribed, were followed, no part of the Newick site would be available for waste disposal.

·     Being sited on top of a hill, it was inevitable that at some stage, waste liquids would leach into the nearby River Ouse, contaminating it. A little way down stream form the site at Barcombe Mills, water was extracted from the Ouse to supply drinking water to Newick and the neighbouring villages.

·     The proposed site flooded regularly and spectacularly, with large lakes forming. These constituted an important element in flood control for downstream Lewes.  If 25 hectare (60 acres) were covered in concrete, most of that water would flow into the Ouse, thus exacerbating Lewes’s flood risk.

·     Eighty large lorry movements a day to bring waste material to the site would impose a strain on the capacity of the A272 and, to the extent that the waste would come from the South Coast, which already generated the bulk of the waste that ESCC had to handle, the A275, which, though A class roads were not very wide. This volume of extra heavy lorry traffic would also add considerably to the noise and fumes experienced by residents in the houses in Newick and Chailey along side those roads. Nor would the extra traffic be confined to the A roads. It would inevitably seek and find “rat runs” such as Cinder Hill. Vast juggernaut lorries would therefore be using country lanes to the detriment and safety of existing users – horse riders, dog walkers, pedestrians and local drivers.

·     The 400 KV National Grid power line crossed the site. 

Local MP Norman Baker then addressed the meeting. He was highly critical of the way in which ESCC had handled the consultation process, which seemed to suggest that they did not want to get local people seriously involved. As an e- consultation, it disenfranchised whole areas – Isfield had no broadband connections – and many elderly people lacked access to computers. Worse still, the language used in the main document was dense, highly technical and obtuse. Lacking a short, clear Executive Summary, many people would have given up before, some way after page 100, a glancing reference to the possible site at Newick could have been found.

Norman Baker next compared ESCC’s approach to re-cycling, under which by their policy of capping Council’s re-cycling rates, they failed to give sufficient encouragement to District Councils to develop better and more comprehensive re-cycling schemes that were needed to reduce the volume of commercial and house hold waste in the first place, to that of another Tory controlled County Council, West Sussex. WSCC were in the forefront of best re-cycling practice. They had ruled out land raise and incineration and were putting considerable effort to developing biological and mechanical solutions to waste disposal. ESCC should follow WSCC practice and approach.

Finally, Norman Baker invited the meeting to sign up to the Liberal Democrat petition against the land raise solution favoured by ESCC.

Chris Jago, Chairman of the Newick District Council, opposing both the ESCC’s general approach and the specific proposal for the development of the Newick site, argued that opposition to the proposals was not “Nimbyism”. Opponents were arguing that there was no need for these proposed land raise developments to take place anywhere in East Sussex. Furthermore, saving ancient woodland, preventing the contamination of drinking water for thousands of people and  preventing flooding in Lewes were wider, community benefits not normally associated with “Nimbyism”.

Speaking from the floor, Dr. Ashby, the Head of the Newick Health Practice, drew attention to the potential health risks from the proposed land raise and waste disposal facility. He pointed out that patients of the Newick health Centre already showed a very high incidence of cancer.

Closing the meeting, Ken Jordan, the Chairman of the Vale of Sussex Society, invited a show of hands form the audience of those opposed to the proposed land raise development between Newick and Piltdown. The meeting was unanimously opposed to the ESCC proposals. Ken Jordan invited everyone in the hall to write to the ESCC officers before 15^th January, copying their letters to local County Councillor Meg Stroude, registering their reasoned opposition and to encourage friends and neighbours to do the same.

Cllr L Waller – Chailey Parish Council 8.1.2010