Agenda item

That the contents of the update report be noted.

The Leader introduced an update report on Walleys Quarry looking at the complaints, monitoring information, actions of the Environment Agency (EA) and the Borough Council.

The Interim Chief Executive advised that there had been a rise in complaint data during April and May.  Most of the spikes in complaints had been made at weekends. The Council had been in talks with Walleys Quarry to see if the reason for this could be found.

Where there had been ten or more odour complaints in one day it was referred to as an ‘odour event’ and there had been 5 ‘events’ in April with 25 complaints in one day on the 1st.   There were 15 ‘odour events’ in May with twenty nine complaints being received on the 21st.

Over the winter months there had been deterioration in the odour conditions and had that had continued into April and May.

Since the previous Cabinet meeting, the Council had written to the Secretary of State and were awaiting a response.  In addition, leading environmental experts had been appointed to prepare expert evidence with our King’s Counsel in preparation for the commencement of legal proceedings upon permission from the Secretary of State.

In terms of Scrutiny, the Working Group was continuing to meet  and a Members Briefing Session was held on 1 May.

The data adjustment that the Council was expecting from the Environment Agency (EA) still had not been received to date and was still being chased.

Officers were continuing to monitor the site with sniff tests and monitoring equipment.

The Leader stated that there were three issues.  The first being the upsurge in complaints regarding the increase in odours around the  weekends which indicated that the operator was not running the site in a good way to stop the odours.  The EA were not using the powers that they had to deal with the issues.

From the Council’s point of view, a decision had been made to move forward on legal action  and the Secretary of State had been written to.  Unfortunately, the General Election had intervened in that and therefore it was likely that

a response would not be received until after 4 July.

Regarding the Calibration issue and incorrect data, the Leader stated that the information had been awaited for many months.  It was disappointing that the deadlines that were set kept being pushed back by DEFRA and the EA.  The Council would continue to press for that information.

Councillor Fear suggested that the spikes in complaints at weekends could be down to more people being at home, depriving them of relaxation time.

Members were disappointed with the non-receipt of the correct data and that the change made in management at the EA had not brought about a better response to the requests made by the Council.

The Leader asked the Interim Chief Executive, at the next meeting with the operator, to express the Council’s disappointment that the odours were rising again.

Resolved:    That the contents of the update report be noted.

Watch the debate here