On October 18th, Haringey's Regulatory Committee voted to advise the Cabinet to remove the Pinkham Way site from the draft North London Waste Plan.
In almost eight years, the Council has never explained why, when other boroughs put forward well-established industrial sites for waste, Haringey has found it necessary to put forward one of only 8 Grade 1 Sites for Nature Conservation in the borough - and a London Priority Habitat to boot.
Neither does the site's employment status qualify it for inclusion in the plan, as the Council has argued.
As part of an intense campaign leading up to the Cabinet meeting on November 13th, we've launched a petition - only our second ever.
All members of the household over 18 may sign. Please pass it to family, friends, and you local netwroks. We need to keep the supporting signatures as local as possible, preferably from Haringey, Barnet and Enfield.
To sign in support, please click on this link:
Many thanks for reading this.
Replies
Hi. Where would I find information to understand the argument for using Pinkham Way for the waste treatment plant. I've only seen the argument against. My Mum lives in Sussex where there was a lot of opposition to a treatment plant locally but she came around to the idea once she saw the minimal impact it would have in terms of pollutants into the atmosphere. I like to get to understand both sides before taking a position on these things. Thanks.
Rachael
Neither Haringey, nor the North London Waste Authority (NLWA), nor the North London Waste Plan (NLWP), has ever tried - or bothered to try - to make the case either for the need or the suitability of the Pinkham Way site for waste. It is an Open Green Space - marked in the relevant LBH map as such - and a Grade 1 Site for Nature Conservation (SINC) which Natural England has described as of Metropolitan Importance.
It is thus protected under LBH's own policies, as well as London Plan and National planning policies. Development on such sites can only happen in 'exceptional circumstances' when all possible alternatives have been exhausted. This is not the case here.
The issue surfaced in 2011, when the NLWA announced that it had bought two thirds of the site from Barnet Council - for cash, and without planning permission(this remains the case). It gave its member councils two days to approve this.
Why the NLWA purchase? It was engaged in a £4-5bn 30-year waste contract procurement, involving a substantial (c £260m) PFI bid. For this it needed a 'deliverable' site. It was clear that planning had been predetermined.
Its proposals? To build a 300/- tons pa waste processing plant. However, its inaccurate waste projections meant that, 18 months later, it announced that the plant wasn't required!
In 2013, the procurement for which PW was 'integral' had collapsed. Since then NLWA's ownership has been a financial and strategic embarrassment. It has stated repeatedly that it has no plans for the site - independently, we know that this means for 10-15 years at least.
As you may know, PW has a dual designation, unique in the UK, of Grade 1 SINC and employment land. LBH added the employment designation for local political reasons in c 1998, and has never addressed the irreconcilable conflict between the two.
The Council ignored two sets of consultants who stated that the site was wholly unsuitable for employment. In August 2016, however, the Planning Inspector at the Examination in Public for LBH's Site Allocations Plan (SA) asked LBH to explain PW's function in meeting its employment needs. It was only then that the council admitted that it had no function whatever.
The Inspector insisted on the site's removal from the SA, without protest from LBH. Its admission showed a) that its repeated assertions about employment need were baseless, and b) that, consequently, any justification for putting the site forward into the NLWP was also baseless - it had stated that the two were inter-dependent.
The present NLWP draft estimates a need for 9 extra hectares of land by 2035. The London Plan requires that this should be Industrial land. To find that 9 ha, the plan has identified some 93.5 ha of qualifying Industrial Land. Pinkham Way simply does not qualify.
In 2013, Haringey stated publicly that its dealings re PW would be 'open and transparent'. The Council couldn't have failed more dismally to live up to that commitment.
I should add that the new LBH administration has been landed with this long-established pot of poison. It is not of its own making, but it has the solution to hand.
Rachael
Thanks for your reply. I have to be out this evening but will respond fully tomorrow.
Kind regards,
Stephen
Signed.
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