PLANNING chiefs at Warrington have thrown out controversial proposals for a waste transfer station which would have handled 15,000 tonnes of waste a year.
Angry residents attended a meeting of the borough council’s development control committee to oppose the scheme on land off the A49 Winwick Road at Longford.
Local councillors Mike Hannon and Pat Wright spoke against the scheme – and the Orford Neighbourhood Project also lodged objections.
Officers had recommended the scheme be approved but councillors decided it should be rejected on traffic and highway grounds.
They shared the view of residents who believed the impact of more heavy traffic on the already congested A49 would cause chaos.
The proposals involved part of the site of a proposed medical waste facility, controversially granted permission on appeal in 2002, but which was never built because the land is owned by the borough council who would not allow it to go ahead.
But the new scheme was a totally separate proposal – not involving medical waste. It proposed an enclosed transfer building, offices, storage bays for recycled wastes and outside storage of skips, wagons, etc. An existing building would have been used for sorting dry non-recyclable and recyclable materials.
The facility would have had a throughput of 15,000 tonnes of locally collected green and garden wastes, metals, bricks and hardcore. Access would have been from Winwick Road and the applicants had suggested that lorries arriving at the site from the north should drive further into the town centre to an island, go around the island and then travel out of town again to avoid having to make a right turn.
Officers had argued that forecast traffic movements – 54 on weekdays and 30 on Saturdays – would have only a negligible impact on the A49.
