Staffordshire County Council Rejects Biffa ‘Incinerator’ Proposals for Cannock

Sep 15, 2011 by Ian Mellett

Incinerator Proposals for Cannock Laid to Waste

Plans by waste management firm Biffa to construct an ‘energy facility’ at the Kingswood Lakeside employment park in Cannock have been reviewed, and subsequently turned down, by Staffordshire County Council Today.

The proposals were originally accepted by Staffordshire County Council, but recently the decision came under fire when suggestions that planners may have been swayed by an offer from Biffa of around £80,000 to spend on community activities (as reported in the Express & Star).

Staffordshire Council said that legal advice had been sought after the issue of the offer had been raised by concerned committee members, who indicated that the offer should not have had any bearing on the decision.

Cannock Chase Council originally reported their disappointment at the plans being given the go-ahead at the time, as we reported prevously, as did local MP Aiden Burley on his website (detailed here).

Members of Cannock Chase District Council attended the meeting Today at Staffordshire County council to voice their concerns directly.

Councillor Graham Burnett, Economic Development and Planning Shadow Portfolio Leader for Cannock Chase District Counil, told us:

Our speakers – John Bernard, June Davies, John Rowley, Kath Perry – spoke with great passion and authority; we owe them

Cllr Gordon Alcott, Economic Development and Planning Portfolio Leader, said:

I’m delighted that Staffordshire County Council reconsidered their earlier views and decided to reject this application.

Quite simply the proposed incinerator was neither needed nor wanted in this district. Residents here and in neighbouring areas were set against these plans which could have resulted in damage on the heathlands and a paucity of job opportunities in a key location.

We need to attract hi-tech companies to Kingswood Lakeside who will create jobs for the future for our communities. This planned development took up a lot of space for little reward and would have been a blot on the landscape.

Jeff Rhodes, Biffa’s Planning and Permitting Manager, told us:

“We are very surprised with the highly unusual and curious way in which the committee has reversed a decision it made a few weeks ago despite the details of our scheme remaining exactly the same. This is unique in our experience and does nothing to encourage confidence in the planning system. We obviously have the right to appeal and will now look at taking such action”

Update 02/11/2011

We received the following email from Biffas PR team with regards to an automated comment appearing on the site, which was generated via a ‘scraping’ tool, which automatically logs tweets that link the article.

From:
Richard Truman
[email redacted]

Message:
Hi,

I work with Biffa and have just been alerted to the bribery
allegations comment with this story:
http://www.connectcannock.co.uk/2011/09/staffordshire-district-council-rejects-biffa-incinerator-proposals-for-cannock/

The claim is not true so we ask that you remove the comment from the website.

Thank you,
Richard Truman
Pelican PR
On behalf of Biffa

While in general our policy is not to remove comments wherever possible, in this instance we would agree that the statements used in the original tweet could be misconstrued and, in recognition of this, we have chosen to remove the tweet.

The tweet that has been removed can be found on the originators twitter feed here.