BELLE MONT on how the environmental vandals running Sutton Council are pushing a scheme for another industrial plant on Beddington Lane
Another rubbish idea from Sutton Council, who have a ‘fuck you’ attitude to polluting Croydon
Just a matter of weeks since declaring a climate emergency, Sutton Council is tonight backing a Beddington Lane waste plant – another one – that will see a massive 350,000 tons of rubbish trawled along Croydon’s Purley Way, Ampere Way and Coomber Way every year. What’s worse, only 71,300 tons of that rubbish will be recycled, while the other 278,700 will go up in smoke at the nearby Viridor incinerator, once that environmental disaster is in working order.
Sutton’s planning committee meets tonight to approve the “Suez Recycling and Recovery (UK) Ltd Beddington Lane Resource Recovery Facility”, which is in fact being moved from Benedict Wharf in Mitcham, scene of a blaze in March this year which took firefighters two days to get under control. Merton Council wants that site to build 500 homes.
The Sutton Council report to tonight’s meeting chooses to ignore Croydon’s concerns, both over polluting emissions from the site blowing on the prevalent westerlies into their neighbouring borough, and repeats Sutton’s “fuck you” attitude to their neighbours in directing all the heavy traffic from the development via Croydon.
The thousands of extra HGV trucks per year travelling to and from the proposed Suez plant will be in addition to the trucks rumbling through to the incinerator once that is fired up.
As far as Sutton council’s paper to their planning committee is concerned their worries end at the borough boundary.
More HGVs coming to a road near you, thanks to ‘eco-friendly’ Sutton Council
Croydon Council’s view is that the proposal should comply with their borough’s own air quality guidance and policies. But Sutton feels that Croydon residents’ health is none of their concern, stating baldly that, “The proposal is within the administrative boundary of the London Borough of Sutton and as such the only policies which are material in the determination of this planning application are those of the London Borough of Sutton.”
Or put more bluntly: “Fuck you”.
And surprise, surprise, Sutton council has spoken to their own environmental health team “who have raised no objections”.
Croydon does not believe Sutton’s traffic figures and can’t see how even their calculation of 227 HGV movements per day, in and out of the site, can be coped with.
It is intended that waste deliveries will take place from 7am to 7pm Monday to Friday, but Croydon worries about weekend traffic snarl ups on the Purley Way, when rubbish deliveries get mixed up with Ikea-bound shooppers.
There has already been tension between the councils, with Sutton postponing a consultation on its proposals to divert heavy traffic away from the tweely named Beddington Village and sending industrial traffic via Croydon, after complaints from Croydon council.
It took firefighters two days to get the blaze under control when fire broke out at Suez’s Mitcham plant in March
But regardless of any future consultation, expected soon on reintroducing the diversion proposals, Sutton is making it a condition of approving this planning application that all traffic – that’s nearly 60,000 additional lorries each year – must go via Croydon, stating that, “The Delivery and Servicing Plan shall include details of the HGV haulage routing to and from the site which shall be along Coomber Way and Ampere Way and shall also include details of how future customers of the site shall be informed of this HGV haulage route.”
This additional traffic will go through Croydon’s Broad Green ward and after that via West Thornton and Waddon wards.
Suez’s waste treatment system is the height of sophistication
Broad Green and West Thornton wards are both represented by council cabinet members, in Stuart Collins and Stuart King, with some responsibility for waste disposal and the local environment in Croydon. But tonight it will be Andrew Pelling, a Labour councillor from Waddon, who will speak on behalf of the residents he represents at the planning meeting at Sutton’s St Nicholas Way Civic Offices.
In a studied insult to Pelling, Sutton Council’s planning papers removes his councillor status and uses the wrong spelling for his ward, fully reflecting their contemptuous attitude to residents in neighbouring Croydon. “Mr Pelling who is the local ward councillor for Wadden in the London Borough of Croydon objected to the proposal.”
Also speaking against the proposal tonight is the independent Sutton Councillor Nick Mattey, and it is already well-known what that borough’s LibDem leadership thinks of him…
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it would be useful for Sutton Council to take note that we are all boroughs of London, It is not in anyones interest to begin radicalising residents of any borough by failing to take care of the environment. The three wards mentioned already have illegal pollution levels most days. Adding to that with HGVs on unsuitable roads will lead to chaos on those roads many of which are already blocked currently most of the day. It is highly unlikely that a further 200+ lorries would even be able to circumnavigate the roads to get to the site. however failing to take note of representations from residents in those wards is wrong. The crass failure of elected representatives to take note of public wishes they are elected to represent only plays into the hands of extremism and radicalisation of the general public. This makes a mockery of joined up administration.
Oh for a real planning plan for London!
If London is to be the National Park City, then London needs to take Beddington and plant thousands of new trees to green the whole area, including the industrial estates, not concrete the remaining open land over.
Beddington deserves to be delivered from at least some of its environmental burdens– the sewage works and the incinerator, and the traffic servicing its industrial areas.
Who is planning an incineration-free future? The South West London Waste Partnership ?
Could not the sewage works be covered by an enormous dome to keep the stink in?
Probably no-one is working on these key issues.
Shame.