Waste plant set for A34 silo site

5:00pm Thursday 28th August 2008

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A giant waste recovery plant looks set to be built in Oxford's Green Belt, despite strong local opposition.

A landmark grain silo building would have to be demolished to make way for the waste separation plant next to the Water Eaton park-and-ride near Kidlington.

About 150,000 tonnes of commercial, industrial and household waste would be processed at the 1.6-hectare site every year. This would involve the separation of recyclable waste from general waste. The facility would be visited by an estimated 180 lorries a day.

The plant is being viewed as a central part of Oxfordshire's strategy for dealing with waste by the county council, which also wants to build an incinerator either in Sutton Courtenay or Ardley.

An officer's report to the council's planning and regulation committee on Monday will recommend that councillors approve the application from Grundon Waste Management, subject to conditions. These include a routing agreement to prevent lorries going into Oxford or Kidlington, unless they are making collections.

The report by the council's head of sustainable development, Chris Cousins, says: "Provided that suitable conditions are imposed to control noise, dust and odour, there should not be a problem for users of the park-and-ride or local residents."

A 127m-long steel-framed building is proposed, with the plant providing 72 new jobs.

But Cherwell District Council, Oxford Preservation Trust, Kidlington Parish Council and the Campaign to Protect Rural England say the scheme would damage the Green Belt.

Gosford & Water Eaton Parish Council has expressed concern about 24-hour lorry movement and the risk of effluent getting into surrounding streams. The parish council also warns that the grain silo is a nesting site for swallows and housemartins.

Parish council secretary Carl Smith said: "It's a huge building and this is going to more or less fill the whole grain silo site. It is supposed to be all recycling, but there are concerns about clinical waste along with domestic waste coming in and creating smells.

"Our preference is for the site to be used for small rural businesses."

But Mr Cousins said there was a pressing need for a new recycling facility if Oxfordshire was to meet targets to reduce waste sent to landfill sites. And with Oxford the main source of waste, it made sense to create it near the city, he said.

Mr Cousins tells councillors in the report: "This part of the Green Belt is already constrained by built development - roads, railways, the park-and-ride and the grain silo.

"The harm to the visual amenity of the Green Belt is offset by the removal of the derelict grain silo buildings which are seen from a distance."

Waste would be fed into machinery that separated metals, with Grundon, a Ewelme-based company, saying as much as 90 per cent of the waste dealt with could end up being recycled. Shredding of residual waste would create refuse-derived fuel. A visitors' centre would also be created.

The material recovery facility would deal with waste from within Oxfordshire. But the report says it could take some waste from outside the county "when other facilities are temporarily closed".