Council will pay to fight recycling plant plans

11:58am Tuesday 1st May 2007

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A VILLAGE parish council is prepared to stump up £30,000 to fight controversial plans to build a recycling plant.

Earlier this month the Worcester News revealed residents in Norton, near Worcester, agreed to allow Norton-Juxta-Kempsey Parish Council to more than double their Council Tax precept to raise £30,000 for possible legal action if Worcestershire County Council approved Mercia Waste Management's plans to build a recycling centre in the village's Woodbury Lane.

Now the parish council has announced it has almost £30,000 which the J7-Waste Action Group, set up to fight the proposals, can use should it be necessary.

Parish council chairman Michael Reeves said he does not think the application will be approved.

"The site being proposed for this sort of development is totally unsuitable," he said.

"It's inconceivable that planners could approve such a scheme for a development within one or 200 metres of private residential homes and a nursing home for the elderly."

Mr Reeves did not want to say where the money had come from.

"It's investments which have been accrued through prudent handling of parish council affairs over the years," he said.

"The reason we are doing it this way is because we are very conscious of people with fixed incomes and old age pensioners within the parish who may find an increase in their council tax to meet this call for funds a burden."

He said the money would be recovered by increasing the precepts gradually over the years.

Had the 2008/2009 precept increased, the £26 cost on a band D property would have more than doubled to about £58.

The Worcester News has followed the action group's campaign against the plans to build a centre capable of handling 105,000 tonnes of material annually from Worcestershire and Herefordshire.

Members fear the site will cause pollution, traffic problems and devalue homes.

Spokesman David Crosby said he was pleased with the parish council's decision.

"I think it's a solution where everybody is a winner," he said.

Ian Barber, spokesman for Mercia Waste Management said: "It's an industrial use on allocated industrial employment land and it already has planning permission for industrial-type development.

"If it wasn't adequately allocated land I could understand why people might not think it's suitable."