Sunday 21 November 2010

Meeting of Key Stakeholders Report

An informal report by Nick Hollington
29th October 2010

On Friday 29th October there gathered, in the august surroundings of the Council Chamber in Bexhill Town Hall, representatives of Bexhill and Rother residents, community groups and amenities, together with local councillors, to discuss with East Sussex County Council (ESCC)their plans for the future management of waste and how these might affect Bexhill. As you all know, Ashdown Brickworks in Turkey Road is being considered as a landfill site for the disposal of waste.

All the key ESCC decision-makers were present including Cllr. Matthew Lock, Lead Cabinet Member, Transport and Environment, Rupert Clubb, Director of Transport and Environment and Tony Cook, Head of Planning.

We were also pleased to welcome our MP, Greg Barker, Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change who took time out of his busy Westminster schedule to address the meeting on the government’s latest waste and planning policies.

We had also invited the owners of the Ashdown site, Ibstock Brick Ltd, and they had agreed to attend, but sadly they pulled out at the last minute.

BALI had been preparing for this meeting, which we nicknamed ‘MEEKS,’ for some time. In May I had noticed a statement by Matthew Lock that he wanted the Council to have more ‘dialogue’ with communities affected by their waste plan.

While BALI has had a continuing dialogue with ESCC Officers since last October, when the “Preferred Strategy” was published, I wanted our own residents to have that same opportunity as we have had to put their views ‘over the table’ to the Council and to be able to engage with them.

We had had, of course, our highly successful Public Meeting last November, when over 350 people crammed into Bexhill High School (and many more were turned away) to protest about the Council’s plan but, while this had shown ESCC how strongly the public felt (“Unity Against Landfill” was the Bexhill Observer’s next day headline) about the proposals for Ashdown, there wasn’t really any decent opportunity for stakeholders to seriously engage in any detail with the Council or for the Council to respond.

So I took Cllr Lock at his word and made detailed proposals for this meeting of stakeholders, and he not only accepted them but actually agreed for ESCC to help organize and sponsor the meeting. We then got to work on hiring the venue and organizing the event.

Invitations were sent out to local societies, resident groups, amenities and businesses, especially those likely to be most affected by the plan such as Highwoods Preservation Society, the Highwoods Golf Club and Chestnut Meadow Caravan Park. I am pleased to say that every local organization we approached sent a representative.!

These included Bexhill and Little Common Chambers of Commerce, Bexhill Museum, Bexhill and Rother Environmental Groups, The Bexhill Alliance .... and many more. The Council for the Protection of Rural England also sent a representative; in fact the Director of its Sussex Branch, Stuart Meier, came personally.

The response from our local Council was, I’m pleased to say, also very good. Our Council Leader, Carl Maynard took part as did most of our Bexhill East Sussex County Councillors and also 10 of our Rother District Councillors, including 5 Cabinet members! Furthermore we were pleased to welcome the Chief Executive Officer of Rother District Council, Derek Stevens, the Director of Services and the Head of Planning.

There were also representatives of other Councils present such as Hastings, Wealden and Ninfield Parish Council as these areas would be affected by the impact of heavy waste traffic in their neighbourhoods, if the Ashdown landfill were to go ahead, especially now that the Link Road is unlikely to be constructed in the foreseeable future.

The meeting was ably chaired by Hamish Munro, Chairman of the East Sussex Economic Partnership with Cllr Lock and myself acting as ‘lead facilitators’ regarding the group discussions and the summing up of the meeting.

The first part of the meeting consisted of presentations using power-point slides, firstly by Tony Cook, Head of ESCC Planning regarding the problems of managing the County’s waste given that nearly all landfill sites in the County are now full, then by BALI on why we feel (as do the residents of Bexhill and Rother and Rother District Council itself) that Ashdown Brickworks is a totally unsuitable site for landfill owing to its proximity to local housing and amenities and the lack of any suitable access.

There was then a searching question and answer session before Greg Barker gave the final presentation on emerging new government policy, which, of course, will be binding on ESCC regarding its decisions. He explained that there is currently a ‘waste review’ and new policy will be announced next spring.

The Coalition will be the “greenest government ever” and act to move waste management further away from the use of landfill towards greater recycling, particularly of commercial and construction waste, and the use of new technologies such as incineration and anaerobic digestion for the recovery of heat and energy from waste.

Also, under its recent National Infrastructure plan, which will be confirmed by its shortly forthcoming Decentralization and Localism Bill, any new waste facilities would need to be decided by local authorities in full consultation with the communities that would be affected by them.

After a short break, the participants then divided into four groups to discuss the many issues involved such as transport, the effects on the environment, amenities etc. also to give their own views on how the County’s waste should be managed. This gave everyone a chance to speak and the notes for each group discussion were taken and will later be published.

I and CllrESCC likewise engaged politely and seriously.

I just hope East Sussex Council were really listening! So many strong cohesive arguments were made during the meeting against the proposed landfill at Ashdown that I asked in my summing up simply ‘How many reasons against the landfill does there have to be before ESCC rejects the idea as a non-starter?’ I also asked how many communities had to be affected by the plan and how long it would take before they finally made the right decision to give up on a plan which has so little support behind it and so little logic and common sense to recommend it. Would you believe East Sussex have been considering a landfill at Ashdown since 1988? Isn’t this in itself a waste of public money and shouldn’t it stop now?

I would like to thank all those who helped plan and arrange this meeting - particularly Diane Cheeseman, Iva Barnes and Colin Bennett of BALI and Ian Blake and Amanda Parks of ESCC.

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