Planning Committee finally recommend Approval
12 December 2008
The long and protracted saga of our planning application in Dagenham reached a positive conclusion yesterday.
After more than one and a half years since we first submitted a planning application in May 2007 -we have finally got a positive decision from the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation Planning Committee on 11th December 2008. Progress had been hugely frustrated by LTGDC's involvement of the GLA for their view on the application. The GLA were still opposed to the application on the grounds that they didn't feel we had proved our case that both gasification and pyrolosis technologies are not Best Available Technology. - they may theoretically be best or even considered technology but they certainly aren't available - well not to anyone with an ounce of common sense anyway. (they obviously hadn't read this web site or any of our supporting testimony) Interestingly there were no other material objections from any other party and the committee members only took six minutes to grant approval.
If we had failed to get this approval then the process would have immediately moved to appeal for which we had HM Inspector of Planning booked for February. This would have been a collosal waste of public funds (as well as our own) because the planning inspector would have had no choice but to grant our application - because it ticked every waste and energy policy guideline in the book. Giles Dolphin who is head of Planning Decisions at the GLA who as well as being in our opinion spectacularly ill-briefed by his department had also buried his head in the unworkable and unrealistic political dogma left over from the previous Mayors position on Waste to Energy. Does he really still expect to draw off hydrogen from a waste to energy plant to enable the bendy buses to run on the gas? And pigs may fly. It is exactly this type of wooly thinking that is the reason that UK Renewable targets are highly unlikely to be achieved. It is about time that Boris Johnson got a grip on the issues here and made positive steps to ensure that this debacle doesn't happen again. We will of course be inviting Mr Dolphin to open the new plant - if he is still in post by then. Despite us leaving messages, Mr Dolphin has so far declined our offer of a meeting to educate his department on the true state of the market but we live in hope. The GLA therefore remain the only public body that we have come across who haven't whole-heartedly supported our vision for the future - strange given that the biggest waste issue in the country is how London copes with a move from "truck & dump" to more sustainable forms of waste disposal. Meanwhile the forward thinking planning officers at LTGDC wisely (and with a clear conscience) chose to disregard the GLA and recommended that the committee granted approval - they pitched the proposal to committee with aplomb and immensley positive support - it takes guts to make a stand like this against the GLA and we are extremely grateful for LBBD Planning Department's gutsy approach to the problem and in particular to Will Steadman, our case officer. Click to read the full committee report.
Our next planning target is to get approval on a greenbelt site - watch this space! Our record of 100% planning approval continues till then!