A plan to create an industrial waste recycling centre on the site of a former coal mine near York has been overwhelmingly rejected.
North Yorkshire County councillors dismissed the scheme by UK Coal’s successor firm Harworth Estates at Stillingfleet.
It followed a welter of objections over health, impact on residents and road safety grounds – alongside a raft of accusations against the authority’s planning department.
After the vote, Stillingfleet councillor Richard Musgrave said he was thrilled with the decision as it had lifted a cloud of uncertainty that had hung for many years over residents of several villages.
He said the proposal had been “totally unsuitable” due to its scale and isolated location and called on Harworth Estates to completely rethink how the site could be used in the future.
Numerous residents and councillors highlighted to the three-hour hearing the county council’s failure to enforce planning conditions imposed on the site in the 1970s to return it to arable farm use after the mine closed in 2004.
Councillor John McCartney said: “I really think it is something the council should be a bit ashamed about, maybe should apologise.
“But it also means you have a lot of angry residents, wound up because they feel betrayed.”
‘Highly biased report’
Planning officers said it had not been considered “expedient, reasonable or in the public interest” to pursue enforcement action as the landowner had demolished 75 per cent of the buildings on the site, despite a large area of it remaining covered in concrete hardstanding.
Councillor Zoe Metcalfe said: “Why do we have conditions if we are not going to enforce them?”
As a result of the council’s inaction, the meeting was told, residents would have no confidence future breaches would be enforced.
The meeting was told Harworth Estates stood to profit from UK Coal’s wrongdoing in breaching planning conditions. This paved the way for a large-scale, intensive industrial application in open countryside.
Residents also accused the authority’s planning officers of presenting a highly biased report, allowing all of Harworth Estate’s claims to go unchecked, but challenging all of the objectors arguments, saying the department had a conflict of interest due to its failings.
Councillors were told planning officers had drawn “convenient conclusions” and reinterpreted Selby District Council’s planning policies, which the district council had insisted completely ruled out such a development on the site.
Planning officers denied cherry-picking arguments to bolster their recommendation to approve the plan, and said they had “balanced the interpretation” of Selby District’s policies.
An agent for Harworth Estates said, with an average of 25 trucks entering and leaving the two hectare site a day, it should not be considered a large-scale intensive use.
The agent said an unused site would be a wasted asset, adding: “It would be hard to find a more suitable site for recycling.”
While planning officers said it would not lead to unacceptable impacts on amenities in the area or road safety, several councillors said they felt residents would inevitably be affected by dust from the operation.