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As has been reported in the local press Surrey County Council have resolved to delete three sites from the Surrey Waste Plan for the development of thermal treatment facilities under policy WD5, in line with legal advice following a revised Appropriate Assessment under the EU Habitats Directive. The sites are:
Heather Farm in Horsell
Land at the former Wisley Airfield
Martyrs Lane in Woking
These sites, currently in the Green Belt, remain as candidates for the development of Recycling, Storage, Transfer, Materials Recovery and Processing Facilities (Excluding Thermal Treatment), under policy WD2.
As a result of these proposed changes a further period of consultation will now ensue from 16 February to 30 March 2007. This has had an immediate impact on the conduct of the Examination in Public into the Surrey Waste Plan. The examination will now run for the first two weeks, as programmed, starting on 13 February (running on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of each week), at which the core issues will be considered. The examination will then reconvene on 22 May after the further consultation on the three sites has finished and the results are available. It is at this stage that the site specific hearings, including Capel, will take place. The examination may well now run into a seventh week in total, taking it until the end of June. The result of these delays could mean that the Plan may not be adopted until early 2008.
Upon being advised of these developments Capel Action Group commented:
"It is extraodinary that, having produced the Surrey Waste Plan, through a process that commenced in 2004, Surrey County Council is now attempting to remove three of the sites that it so carefully selected, and it is doing this in front of the Inspector appointed to consider the soundness of the plan. The result is more delay. We have asked Surrey County Council to provide us with the information they relied upon to make this decision.
There is perhaps one positive aspect to this development. At a Capel Village meeting held on 24 May 2006 Councillor David Munro claimed that modern incinerators were clean and as such no longer required chimney stacks. It has already emerged that the proposed incinerator at Capel, if it is ever built, would have a chimney stack some 70 metres high. The experts clearly know more than Councillor Munro.
Councillor Munro is now stated as accepting that incinerators produce harmful emissions, in this case nitrogen oxide. Apparently, at this stage, nitrogen oxide is considered harmful to the Dartford warbler.
Wait long enough and the truth often emerges. It might soon dawn on Councillor
Munro that impacts on human beings from incinerator emissions are to be
taken seriously too – even if the warbler got there first."
Village Meeting - a date for your diary