BALI - Still in Business?

Friends of B.A.L.I.

Perhaps you are asking – is B.A.L.I. still in business – if so what are they doing? Or have they run off with our money and all our accrued interest!? Let's answer the easy questions first.

No, we have not run off with your precious savings; your money is still safe and sound in the Yorkshire Building Society - and perhaps we should gloss over the subject of the huge sums of interest you are earning from your investments! However, B.A.L.I. would like to thank all of you who have stayed with us and given so generously over the years because you feel our town is worth fighting for and you refuse to accept that it could be blighted by a landfill site for the next 30 years.

So what have we been doing? Our fund raising efforts continue. To date we have raised £23,000 for the War Chest; this money is 'ring fenced' and will only be used to fight any planning application. The 'every day' fund stands at £8,000, and is augmented by the weekly bonus ball lottery; (there are still a few 'lucky numbers' available! Please phone 845688 if you would like to join in the fun).

Our Solicitors (Stallards) continue to keep B.A.L.I. informed of any developments re. landfill issues, on which we act if necessary.

B.A.L.I. meets every 6 months with the Manager and Company Secretary of Ibstocks. We hope these frank discussions keep us in the picture regarding changes of use of the brick works site.

We are members of the Rother Environmental Group who meet monthly; we also take a keen interest in the Highwood Preservation Society. Our website is out of date. From now on it will be up dated monthly with new and relevant information.

Hope to see some of you through the spring and summer months – we accept that trying to raise funds in this period of recession is going to prove very difficult. However, let's keep up the good fight.

Mike Rosner (B.A.L.I.)

Letter published in the Bexhill Observer March 20th 2009

BALI Chairman Newsletter - March 2009 (2)

BALI Chairman Newsletter - March 2009 (continued)

Recently, we had good news that the Bexhill Cemetery is to be extended, despite Ibstock's objections and appeals, into the 'four fields' that were claimed to be needed by Ibstock for stockpiling of clay in the event of a landfill. But, reading Ibstock's barrister's case, as BALI was privileged to do, you realise how strongly Ibstock still want to keep an option to landfill their Ashdown site. So they might appeal, or buy other fields, or cope with excess clay in some other ways, given they have strong intention to use Ashdown one day for landfill. I don't think for one minute that they have got together and said 'Well that's it then, we won't have a landfill at Ashdown'. It's far too important to them.

An then, almost out of the blue, reading Rother District's latest Local Development Framework document, I came across a section which, in line with the WLP's vision for the Ashdown site, proposed a 'country avenue' from the Link Road, across the A269 to 'provide the infrastructure essential to the planned landfill use of the Ibstock site'. Clearly, Rother District Council hasn't forgotten about a landfill at Ashdown!

Neither have East Sussex County Council, but they are being more objective in their consideration of future waste disposal in the county than previously. They are looking in the Waste and Mineral Development Framework to reduce landfill as much as possible and they will set about a 'fresh' selection of sites, even including sites that were previously rejected in the Waste Local Plan. But Ashdown will certainly be in the frame; that is clear, especially if the South East Plan is approved(as I believe it will) requiring East Sussex to accept for disposal 1.6 million tonnes of London waste over the period till 2026. The new Newhaven Incinerator will certainly not be able to cope with that as well as East Sussex waste.

I have been working hard these past six months making representations on behalf of BALI to all these plans and frameworks and liaising constantly with all the relevant bodies and key players. We have also been meeting with Ibstock in a good atmosphere, believing that engagement with them does not represent any endorsement of their plans. We must be careful however, that we are not in any sense 'soft-soaped'.

That there is still no 'big news'- of a planning application for instance - lulls most Bexhillians understandably into a false sense of security regarding the Ashdown site. BALI has however, tried not to do much publicity for our cause in the past six months as it were to wake people up. We don't believe it's our role to 'hype up' our case when there is no firm news. It could be counter productive.

However, I believe that in the next six months, something 'big' will break and the media will take it up, quite likely in a major way. The South East Plan will likely be approved and there will be focused attention in the media on where the projected London waste will go. The ESCC Waste and Minerals Development Framework will reach the stage of 'Strategic Site Allocation' and possibly 'site selection', bringing landfill at the Ashdown site up for attention in the same way as previously did the Waste Local Plan. Against this background, Ibstock, faced with declining orders for bricks, might get an offer from a waste contractor that it simply cannot refuse.

When we get wind of something important happening, or certainly at the next stage of the WMDF, we will re-engage our legal consultant, Geoff Smith of DMH Stallard to represent us, utilising the funds my colleagues have raised and we have safeguarded for the important fight I am convinced still lies ahead to prevent the devastation that would be caused to the whole of Bexhill by a new landfill in the Ashdown quarries.

To successfully fight a landfill, we will need planning and environmental experts, and, of course, lawyers. These cost money. Without the funds raised by Mike Rosner and his team we couldn't afford to hire them and therefore would have no chance of winning. Even so, we will have a long hard fight on our hands and probably more funds - and certainly more volunteers - will be needed. But this report should end with a big thank you to all those who have raised funds and those who have donated money to our cause, without which we wouldn't be able to move forward in our campaign at all.

Nick Hollington

Chairman BALI

March 2009

BALI Chairman Newsletter - March 2009 (1)

For me, these past six months as Chairman of BALI have been busy, yet the ordinary Bexhillian could be forgiven for thinking that not much has happened regarding the proposed landfill at Ibstock's Ashdown Brickworks. This is implied because nothing much has been "in the news".
One should remember at these times, and I am always conscious of, the facts that simply don't go away. These are as follows:

1. the Ashdown quarries are large holes in the ground; there are very few of those in East Sussex. They are of huge commercial value.
2. The tendency has been, and still largely is, to use such holes for the landfilling of waste. (Those not so used are Eden-project type exceptions, often because they are 'wrong' for such uses, being chalk pits and / or with risk to ground water.
3. Ibstock is a company which has tended to use its excavated quarries mostly for landfill. It's probably the best and easiest way to bring profit to their shareholders.
4. Landfill in East Sussex is fast running out, with its only two sites left, Beddingham and Pebsham, which are shortly to close.
5. Recycling locally has been greatly increased but 60% of East Sussex waste is still disposed of by landfill.
6. The incinerator at Newhaven will probably not be able to cope with all of East Sussex's waste and certainly not if London waste is sent here as is envisaged in the South East Plan.
7. (Probably most importantly) The Ashdown site has been allocated for the landfilling of waste in the ESCC Waste Local Plan. It is the only such site allocated for landfill in East Sussex.

Ashdown Brickworks site pitcured left:
top) looking west and
below) looking east.

Since the ESCC Waste Local Plan allocated Ashdown for landfill in a sense we have been lucky. Firstly, that the proposal to use Ashdown for landfill hit the time of the 'green revolution' where landfill started to be and is increasingly regarded as the least acceptable way of disposing of waste, largely because of its methane emissions. So there has been a great emphasis both on recycling, which has increased greatly, and on incineration and other means of waste disposal.

Secondly, almost as soon as the Waste Local Plan was passed in February 2006 it became outmoded and work began on a new 'Waste and Minerals Development Framework' for East Sussex, allowing a renewed consideration of the disposal of waste in the county and a fresh selection of suitable sites - though not entirely fresh, as I have recently found out. This process has ground on for several years now and is still incomplete.
Finally, the Link Road has taken much more time than expected to be approved and is, even as I write, still not 100% certain to be built. The biggest disadvantage of the Ashdown Site, as recognised by the Waste Local Plan Inspector, was/ is the transport access and there have not been the developments in the transport infrastructure that were envisaged as necessary at the time of the Waste Local Plan.
But things being slow, or us being so far lucky, does not mean that the prospect of an Ashdown landfill has receded one iota and many times over the past six months I have been reminded that a landfill at Ashdown is still very much in the minds of those who have the power to effect it.