Warrington Clinical Waste Treatment Centre Appeal Proposed Outline Evidence of Alan Watson

5.Local Planning Policy and the Development Plan

1. 
   The local planning policies and the development plan are outlined in the Statement of Common Ground. I have reduced duplication so far as possible but certain policies are particularly relevant to this evidence – mainly those policies relating to need, climate change and the waste hierarchy.
   

6.The Waste Core Strategy

1. 
   The Waste Core Strategy²⁷ was formally adopted on 21^st November 2012 and it now forms part of the Development Plan for Gloucestershire.
   
2. 
   The Strategic Objectives of the WCS are:
   

1. 
   achieving zero-growth achieved across all waste streams by 2020;
   
2. 
   at least 60% household waste recycled/composted by 2020 with an aspiration for 70% by 2030;
   
3. 
   to recover the maximum amount of value including energy from any waste that cannot be re-used, recycled or composted;
   
4. 
   to recognise the continuing role of landfill for the disposal of certain residual and hazardous wastes whilst reducing our reliance on landfill;
   
5. 
   to ensure the environmental and social impacts of waste management particularly climate change and risks to human health are minimised by; managing waste close to where it arises, promoting the use of sustainable transport, avoiding current and potential flood risk areas, safeguarding existing and proposed waste sites, promoting high quality sustainable design, protecting national and local areas of landscape and nature conservation importance, and prioritising the co-location of similar or related facilities on existing waste sites or previously developed sites in preference to greenfield locations where appropriate and where the cumulative impact is not unacceptable to the host location.
   

1. 
   Importantly the WCS states: “the WCS will only make provision for a maximum of 145,000 for the recovery of MSW during the WCS period” (as the top end of a range from 108,000 tonnes). This figure was derived from the response by GCC to a scenario detailed by the Inspector in the EIP CD14.12. This was based on assumed growth rates which have now been demonstrated to be nearly 5% greater than the actual growth rates. This question has therefore been revisited below using the more up to date information on waste growth and arisings now available.
   
2. 
   The strategic objectives of the WCS are particularly important with their emphasis on driving waste up the hierarchy as emphasised by the Companion Guide to PPS10 which states²⁸: “In developing…local planning strategies, consideration should be given to all the levels of the waste management hierarchy. It will be helpful for these to be dealt with sequentially and to be linked, in order to address the Key Planning Objective of driving waste management up the waste hierarchy and addressing waste as a resource. Policies will need to be particularly supportive of the upper end of the hierarchy if they are to be effective in practice.”
   

7.Planning and Pollution Control Regimes

1. 
   The approach taken by the NPPF to the roles of the planning and pollution control authorities is similar to that in the previous guidance in PPS23.
   
2. 
   Para 122 of the NPPF says “local planning authorities should focus on whether the development itself is an acceptable use of the land, and the impact of the use, rather than the control of processes or emissions themselves where these are subject to approval under pollution control regimes. Local planning authorities should assume that these regimes will operate effectively. Equally, where a planning decision has been made on a particular development, the planning issues should not be revisited through the permitting regimes operated by pollution control authorities”.
   
3. 
   It is clear, therefore, that it is appropriate for the pollution control regime to set emission standards for a process and to determine whether the most appropriate scrubber would be a wet, dry (as in the case of Javelin Park) or semi-dry system. In doing so, however, account must be made of the acceptability of those process related decisions such as the impacts of any discharges on amenity or, in this case, the impacts on compliance with air quality standards and the related implications including possible effects on health and amenity.
   
4. 
   If overlap is to be avoided but the regimes are to be complimentary and effective it is essential that each regime comprehensively addresses those reviews, tasks, duties and obligations which are relevant to that regime. There are, however, some issues about which there is a certain ambiguity. Obviously this needs to be addressed if those elements of the review process are not to be lost by default.
   
5. 
   An important example of this relates to the obligations of the Stockholm Convention which require that priority consideration should be given to alternative processes which do not generate persistent organic pollutants. The background to this has been included below.
   
6. 
   Finally, whilst local planning authorities and planning decision makers will undoubtedly follow the guidance and work on the basis that the pollution control regime operates effectively this may not reduce (and is likely to actually increase!) the concerns of those members of the public who are aware either from their own experience or from their research that the pollution control regime has often not operated effectively in reducing harm from emissions of pollutants.
   
7. 
   The regular breaches of environmental permits by incinerator and other operators together with the continued exceedances of health based air quality standards which should have been met years ago mean that about 29,000 early deaths each year in the UK are likely to be caused by air pollution –although air pollution tends to shorten people’s lives by a shorter time this is more than obesity and alcohol combined. Examples such as these clearly demonstrate the difference between the real world and the assumptions under which the planning regime labours. Another way of looking at this is that if the current situation reflects the competent operation of the pollution control regime then it is entirely reasonable that the public should be concerned.