In another set-back for “Hapless Helen” Bailey, the £230,000 per year chief executive of Sutton Council, a planning application to build a “monster” waste plant on Beddington Lane was rejected by councillors last night.
Refused: Suez’s monster industrial recycling plant
The planning committee voted 4-3 against the proposal, crucially with two of the Liberal Democrats who control the council abstaining.
Officials from multi-million waste company Suez were “unerved completely”, according to one observer at the planning meeting at the Sutton Civic Centre, when LibDem Ed Joyce asked them to quantify the plant’s explosive potential, in equivalent tons of TNT.
Eventually, the Suez reps attempted to reassure the room that if — for any reason — their proposed industrial plant was to explode, the blast would “usually go upwards”. So that’s alright then…
It certainly seemed to be alright as far as Joyce, a councillor for Beddington South and Roundshaw, was concerned, because he would toe his party line and vote in favour of the potentially explosive scheme.
Pro Suez: Beddington South councillor Ed Joyce voted for the potentially explosive recycling plant
Suez may have thought their scheme was a bit of a shoo-in, after Bailey’s officials in the planning department had given a glowing recommendation for approval for the proposal which “would provide reliable, renewable energy by generating gas… processing up to 100,000 tonnes of food waste a year”.
The council planners’ 63-page report about Suez’s application had somehow omitted to mention the small detail that several anaerobic digestion plants across the country have indeed exploded, raising serious questions about the safety of such facilities.
The council’s official report also lacked any fire risk analysis or contingency planning.
Nick Mattey, the independent councillor for Beddington who attended the meeting as an observer, said, “Perhaps they simply didn’t want to alarm anyone — least of all parents of children attending the two primary schools located right next to the proposed site.”
Beddington Lane is, of course, already the site of the Viridor incinerator, burning the rubbish of at least four boroughs, including Croydon’s.
Calamity: Jayne McCoy once claimed that incinerators improve air quality
“Calamity” Jayne McCoy, another LibDem member of the committee, praised the project with all the passion you might expect of a councillor who in the past has tried to claim that incinerators improve air quality.
The council officials’ report did admit that only 6% of the food waste processed at the facility would come from within Sutton, while the remainder would need to trucked in from other boroughs. And yet officials claimed that importing mountains of food waste would reduce overall road miles and pollution — although they failed to provide any data or modelling to substantiate this claim.
Mattey described the council officer’s introductory statement to the application as having “a strong bias in favour of the application”.
Mattey said: “This lack of impartiality was both striking and concerning.”
The planning committee was chaired by LibDem Richard Clifton, who anti-pollution campaigners remember as having defended support for the Viridor incinerator by his colleague, John Drage, and dismissing the relevance of an undeclared £275,000 donation from a Viridor-managed fund to Drage’s church. So it was of no great surprise when he supported Suez’s application.
But LibDems Patrick Ogbonna and Jake Short could not back the plans, so abstained, and with Tories Eric Allen, Patrick Magnus and Tony Shields voting against with Beddington residents’ independent councillor Tim Foster, the application was refused.
Residents’ champion: independent Nick Mattey and his colleague Tim Foster helped thwart the Suez proposal
The matter is likely to return via appeal by Suez, ensuring the issue remains live and politically toxic as the 2026 local elections approach – something that Sutton’s Liberal Democrats, with a bit of help from Bailey, wanted to avoid.
After the meeting, Mattey said: “I’m left wondering whether the people of Beddington are considered residents or simply the designated ‘waste-receiving class’ in the borough’s social hierarchy.
“It feels increasingly as though the people of Beddington are seen as having a primary civic function of absorbing whatever stinking or potentially explosive scheme enriches Sutton Council’s coffers.”
Read more: Crowe’s feat to ensure incinerator inquiry is avoided
Read more: Six doctors lead the objections against ‘monster’ waste plant
Read more: April Fools! £40m Veolia contract comes into force tomorrow
Read more: BINMAGEDDON!: Veolia is sending recycling to incinerator
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
- Inside Croydon has moved to Bluesky. Click here to join us there for latest updates and insights
Check out our archive of podcasts on Spotify, including our monthly news discussion panel show thingy, the Croydon Insider, and The Andrew Fisher Interview
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
As featured on Google News Showcase
- Our comments section on every report provides all readers with an immediate “right of reply” on all our content. Our comments policy can be read by clicking here
Inside Croydon is a member of the Independent Community News Network
Congratulations to Nick Mattey, Pam Marsh and others who campaigned against this huge waste food factory. There’s a case for Anaerobic Digestion but not in Beddington whose residents have suffered more than enough from having a waste incinerator there. Incredibly it also looks as though the council expected no resistance to the plan with council officers and even the waste company not having done their homework and unable to answer the simplest of questions satisfactorily. Good article once again by Inside Croydon.
Good journalism should not be biased. The writing of the apparent nicknames of the councillors is negatively influencing the reader as to the personalities of these people and has no basis apart from a personal opinion or hearsay.
Ethical journalism requires someone who runs a PR company for bio-waste and bio-fuel organisations to declare their interest when posting comments to unbiased news websites.
The nicknames? They are what the people who work in and around the council use, so it is entirely legitimate, as it reflects on those individuals’ public reputation. Oh, and only one of them is a councillor. So you also need to get your facts right when pompously trying to offer lectures on what is, or is not, “good journalism”.
cant see why Sutton residents are so bothered .. the exhaust and pollution mainly blows over Croydon, whose roads are blighted by the huge lorries …
Pingback: INDEPENDENTS Residents first, always – Sutton Independent Residents