arry McGuigan, the former featherweight world boxing champion, is talking
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about fighting again and appears to be in no mood to contemplate defeat. But this time McGuigan is aiming his fire, not at the boxing fraternity, but at hauliers and all those who are daring to consider wrecking his domestic idyll by setting up a massive waste disposal site within yards of his Kent home.
"Over 400 lorries a day will mean a huge catastrophe for the environment—destruction of mammoth proportion," McGuigan bellows in anger. "I am absolutely opposed to it and will be going to the bitter end on this one. This dumping site is just not going to happen," he warns.
Whether Cleanaway manages to mount a successful counterattack and win planning permission for its proposed site at Lamberhurst Farm, Dargate near Faversham remains to be seen.
But operators of waste disposal sites, mines and quarries and the hauliers who work for them are getting used to similar outbursts of increasingly. organised local fury whenever there is mention of a new site.
Much to the
annoyance of McGuigan and other protesting residents, the Government has recently made it more difficult for councils to control the routes lorries take between these sites and the trunking road network.
Clarification on the issue came in a Department of Environment mineral planning guidance note (MPG), whose contents became binding in November. The note made it clear that planners are no longer able to tie legally binding controls on routeing into planning agreements. This change rests on the DoE pointing out that planning conditions should not control the right of passage of vehicles over public highways.
Under the new rules, site operators will continue to remain largely free to decide the level of truck activity in and out of their sites.
But at a stroke the MPG has nullified an estimated 3,000 lorry routeing agreements throughout Britain, leaving planners, site operators and hauliers wondering how life will operate under a voluntary system.
An early hint came earlier this year when haulier BFI appealed against a stipulation by Dorset County Council that lorries serving a proposed waste disposal site at Beacon Hill, near Poole, should be subject to routeing controls.
Earlier the council had refused the application, spurred on by the lorry issue. It had said it distrusted the principle of gentlemen's agreements on routeing and preferred controlling the issue within its binding planning agreements. The DoE allowed BFI's appeal, forcing the county to bend to a voluntary agreement which requires the company to use its "best endeavour" to discourage lorries from using locally sensitive roads into Beacon Hill. Somewhere between 280 and 370 lorry movements are expected each day.
BFI has agreed to place a video at the site entrance to record the direction from which lorries enter the dump. If they arrive from the wrong direction the company has agreed to verbally warn the operator. If it happens repeatedly, BFI should refuse to use the haulier again.
If hauliers cut costs by flouting spoken agreements—as many country planners across the country fear—they could lose out in other ways. Even if site operators turn a blind eye to short cuts vociferous local communities are unlikely to do likewise—ultimately focusing their own attention, the planning authority and local media's on the environmental problems.
And if planners feel they are unable to trust promises they may flatly refuse to grant planning applications for new sites— ultimately hitting potential opportunities for road transport companies.
Although the MPG loosened up the lorry routeing issue generally the document also spells more stringent times ahead for some hauliers.
It also said that planning agreements should be harmonised nationwide and that all agreements made for sites since 1948 should be eventually reviewed. These reviews will put the hours of operation of the site, and in turn, hauliers' access times under new scrutiny.
"Hours restrictions could well be imposed as a result of the reviews in order to bring older quarries into line with new ones. This in turn could force changes for hauliers," says one senior planner.
Edinburgh-based Neil Williams haulage is one tipper operator which welcomes the changes brought by the MPG. Its managing director David Williams believes that routeing controls—whether legally enforceable or not— add significant costs to dumping work and can easily lead customers to write-off work altogether.
Williams is currently watching the attempts by Greenways Landfill to open a waste disposal site at Ratho in Lothian. The council is discussing ways of minimising the impact of lorries on local communities and is suggesting a routeing agreement.
Adverse effect
Williams believes the routeing will put an extra 15 minutes driving time on each round journey, adding an extra 10% to costs.
As a result he fears for business. "If we are forced to use much longer routes, I believe it will have an adverse effect on business. Everything's down to a price these days and perhaps an extra 15 minutes will mean that some customers won't want their waste shifted at all and would prefer to keep it on site."
But Williams is with the planners when he says he believes voluntary agreements are not strong enough to stop hauliers taking the shortest route. "At first a lot of people will use the correct route but if they see someone who doesn't there will be the temptation to take the short cut too," he says.
Quandaries like this look set to increase as the demand for hauliers at mineral extraction and waste disposal sites rises. The DoE, which authorised the new freedom on routeing for hauliers, knows this more than anyone.
A DoE report issued last month says: 'An increasing demand for aggregates is forecast over the next 20 years. There is increasing difficulty in finding environmentally acceptable sites for extraction and a need for sites to be managed and restored to high environmental standards." E by Karen Miles