BALI visit to Laybrook and Thakeham Village Action

Recently we received some good news, though not about Ashdown Brickworks.

Our colleagues at Thakeham Village Action in West Sussex, fighting a proposed Cory/Ibstock landfill at Laybrook Brickworks had, against all the odds, achieved a famous victory. The planning application to landfill Laybrook had been withdrawn!

This news goes to show that a fight against an unsuitable landfill site is never over till it's over. Unlike Ashdown, Laybrook was already in the West Sussex waste plan and Cory/Ibstock had already put in a planning application. We felt that their cause was nearly a 'goner', but they just kept on fighting – and they won.

We wondered if there were lessons we (BALI) could learn from their successful campaign and asked if we might go down to see them. They were keen to meet us also, having followed closely our campaign. So we (Raymond Walley, Colin Bennett and myself) arranged to meet them in the local village pub, The White Lion, which had become a sort of HQ for their campaign.

First we went to see the Laybrook quarry site which had similarities to Ashdown although it was one big hole rather than two (it is not always understood there are two pits at Ashdown). In many ways, and this was encouraging, we felt Ashdown was far less suitable for landfill than Laybrook. Access to the Laybrook quarry is much better, along good roads. Also there are hardly any houses or amenities within 1 ½ miles of the quarry. Compare Ashdown, sandwiched between the Highwoods SSSI and Bexhill Cemetery, with the Golf Club over the road and the new Bexhill High School and app.4000 houses within a mile of the site!

After visiting the Laybrook site we returned to the White Lion to eat, drink and chat with Jean Beckett and the TVA team in a convivial atmosphere, sharing so many experiences, closely bonded by our common struggle.

"So how did you do it?" we asked. Of course there was no magic formula, no silver bullet they could hand us to defeat the Ashdown landfill proposal at a stroke. So much had been down to their sheer hard work, continually campaigning, lobbying, researching, fundraising etc. over many years.

People seldom realize how groups like TVA and BALI give up so much of their lives over such a long period (TVA: 10 years, BALI 8 ) to fight their causes. TVA just kept on even when their cause looked hopeless. "Never give up!" was above all the message.

But they did give us lots of practical 'tips' to take back to our committee. One was not only to lobby ‘the political establishment’ (e.g. ESCC, Rother District Council) but also quasi-governmental organizations such as the Environment Agency, the Highways authority, English Nature and the Council for Protection for Rural England (CPRE). Also to simply keep giving hard information out (e.g. to Councillors) on the difficulties of operating the proposed landfill, or its harmful effects, even if, as was often the case, they received no reply.

TVA had also organized some excellent events to canvass local support, for instance a Saturday afternoon ‘family march’ around the local area with children, dogs, bands playing etc. which brought out about a thousand people and was heavily publicized in the local paper. The paper also agreed to let them have a regular slot, reporting on their activities and explaining why not only this landfill, but waste landfill in general, was a bad idea and unnecessary in this day and age when so much more waste can be recycled and there are so many new technologies available for disposing of the remainder, many of which can also produce heat and energy resources.

We felt we learnt a lot and came back to Bexhill buzzing with ideas for our BALI Campaign. Above all we felt encouraged by TVA’s final victory and their willingness to give our campaign every support. Many thanks to our friends at Thakeham: you are an example and an inspiration to us!