BASILDON Council is set to object to controversial plans to build a waste management facility at Courtauld Road.
The council’s cabinet will formally approve objections to Essex County Council’s plans at a meeting on Thursday 31 May.
Councillor Richard Moore, cabinet member for planning, said: “This application is fundamentally flawed with not enough emphasis on the implications of all the extra lorry movements and the obvious environmental impact.”
Councillor Malcolm Buckley, cabinet member for regeneration, has previously spoken out on the scheme.
He added: “Basildon has been a dumping ground for Essex’s waste for the best part of a century. The council has opposed this scheme for many years since it was dreamt up by someone living far away.
“The unsuitability of the site and the reasons for locating the facility in the centre of the County still hold good. We continue to object to any waste facility on the site and will again tell Essex in very clear and firm terms.”
The cabinet report says locating such a large facility in an area where traffic congestion is already a major problem would be “unreasonable” and “ill conceived”.
It also states Basildon has been a “reception point for waste” for around 100 years and that the borough has already made a “major contribution” to the waste disposal needs of the County. Basildon already hosts a major waste management facility in Pitsea.
If however, Basildon Council is unable to convince Essex County Council to scrap the plans, then it is requesting that restrictions and improvements are made to the development plans. Among these is that Pitsea Landfill Site is closed by 2015.
The Council will also request that there is direct access to the site from the A127 to reduce traffic congestion as well as providing a new slip road giving direct access from the A127 to Eastmayne.
The Council will also ask for a £500,000 compensatory payment to provide community facilities to offset the impact of the plant, and has also called for more studies to be undertaken into the possible harmful effects to air quality due to the work that will be carried out at the new site.
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