Decision details

Further to Minute No. 57 of the meeting of the Planning Committee held on 24 August 2011 and Minute No. 14 of the meeting of this Committee held on 2 August 2011, the Committee considered the report of the Director of Built Environment on the results of public consultation on the Merseyside and Halton Joint Waste Development Plan (JWDP) Document Preferred Options 2 (New Sites Consultation) Report which was undertaken between May and June 2011; seeking approval of the Publication Waste Development Plan Document and a final 6-week consultation at the end of 2011; seeking approval to move to Submission Stage early in 2012; and setting out the final steps to adopt the JWDP Document.

The report indicated that Government planning policy, the National Waste Strategy and Regional Spatial Strategy all required Development Plan Documents to address sustainable waste management; that through Planning Policy Statement 10 (Planning for Sustainable Waste Management) the Merseyside Districts were required to put in place a planning framework that identified the locations for new waste management infrastructure to meet the identified needs of that Council or a group of Councils; that a 6 week Preferred Options 2 consultation was completed on 20 June 2011 and that the scope of the consultation was limited to only four new sites for waste management uses; that the sites were in Sefton, Halton, St. Helens and Liverpool, the Sefton site being Atlantic Park, Bootle; and that all four sites would now be included within the Publication JWDP Document.

The report also detailed the contents of the Publication Stage of the JWDP Document and advised that this was the final 6 week consultation stage whereby consultees could submit comments; set out the approach to site prioritisation and identification of site allocations; detailed issues associated with landfill; identified the policy framework intended to provide industry with a high degree of certainty and some flexibility in coming forward with proposals for new waste management infrastructure; and the JWDP implementation and monitoring arrangements.

The report concluded that the Public Examination was a formal part of the plan making process that started upon submission of the JWDP to the Secretary of State; that the Examination Hearing was planned for May 2012 and the Inspector’s report was expected 13 weeks after the Examination; and that the JWDP would need to be formally adopted, like all other statutory planning documents, by each of the Merseyside Districts as part of the adopted statutory development plan, with Adoption likely to take place in November 2012.

This was a Key Decision and was currently included on the Council’s Forward Plan of Key Decisions.

RESOLVED:            That Cabinet be requested to recommend Council to:

(1)       note the results of consultation on the Waste Development Plan Document Preferred Options 2 (New Sites Consultation) Report;

(2)            approve the Publication Document for the final six-week public consultation commencing late in 2011 followed by Submission to the Secretary of State;

(3)            delegate District officers within the Waste DPD Steering Group to make the necessary typographical changes to the Publication Document prior to submission of the Waste DPD and for any more substantial changes to be reported to Members through the appropriate scheme of delegation prior to Submission;

(4)            approve the spatial distribution of one sub-regional site per district; and

(5)       the Director of Built Environment be requested to arrange for the Committee to undertake a site inspection of a waste management facility.