ANGRY planning bosses at Warrington have given the go-ahead to proposals to extend the life of major clay extraction and tipping operations at Rixton – but issued a stern warning to the site operators.
Ongoing work will be closely monitored and if stringent conditions are not observed, the borough council will immediately commence enforcement action.
The proposals involve Green Belt land at Moat Lane, Rixton and at the nearby Collier waste tip.
The decision means the life of the site – originally due close this year – will be extended to March 2024.
Members of the borough council’s development management committee expressed concern at the site operators “cavalier attitude” to existing planning conditions.
But planning officers recommended the proposals by approved.
They said clay extraction was an acceptable use of the site and any harm caused by landfilling would be outweighed by the need for the clay for brickmaking.
If the work did not continue it would not be possible to restore the site to an acceptable landform by 2022 as originally intended.
Objectors claimed operations on the site would cause noise, smells, litter and flash water issues.
Borough councillor Bill Brinksman opposed the scheme on the grounds the site had knowingly been overtipped and that the site operators had failed to comply with conditions.
The committee agreed to imposed additional, more strict, conditions.
The site is near the Rixton Claypits nature reserve – a Site of Special Scientific Interest. But Natural England did not oppose the application as they said continued operation of the site was unlikely to have any impact on the reserve – home to the protected Great Crested Newt.
Councillors were told that some areas of land currently known to provide habitats for the newts would be affected – but they were not ideal habitats.
Clay extraction has been carried out at Rixton since 1949. But there is a long history of controversial applications to extend the lift of the operation over a period of many years.
An earlier phase of the site as it now looks
Planners approve tipping – but issue stern warning
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The reason why the tip operators in this case apparently, and it has to be added many many others out and about “developing” in the borough have a “cavalier attitude to existing planning conditions” is because enforcement of those conditions is and has been virtually non existent, for decades. It has not gone unnoticed. This has been so on several schemes where approval has been conditional on the operator or developer complying with listed specified conditions, but failing to do so. The cop-out excuse of retrospective approval of those failures to meet the specified approval conditions has been implemented so many times it has almost become the norm. Until the apparently “angry planning bosses” start to demonstrate precisely what they say and specify, no one will take a blind bit of notice.