Saturday, November 07, 2009

Great Bowden public meeting on Focsa depot

I could not make the public meeting on the new Focsa depot in Great Bowden. According to the Harborough Mail, I was not the only one who was missing:

More than 120 people attended a meeting at Great Bowden Church Hall on Tuesday night to discuss the issue but representatives from Focsa and the council declined to attend.

The hall echoed with groans as meeting chairman, Harborough Lib Dem group chief Phil Knowles, revealed the council's deputy chief executive Kamal Mehta would not be attending.

The council said afterwards this was because the meeting was organised by a political party – the Lib Dems – and it was not appropriate for impartial officers to attend.

But Welham Lane resident Pete Goold said at the meeting it had been jointly organised with residents and was not political.

Mr Knowles added: "This has got nothing to do with politics. We have involved our MP, a Conservative, and Kevin Feltham [a Tory county councillor]. It has denied people the chance to have their questions answered."

The meeting did learn something remarkable though:
The meeting also heard from Roger Clarke, Focsa's former landlord at Pebble Hall Farm, Theddingworth, who said Focsa had been asked to leave his site after it placed increasing demands on the farm.

Focsa moved onto the farm in April after it took over the district council's waste contract from Veolia. Focsa did not have planning permission at that site either and submitted a retrospective application to Northants County Council.
All of which makes this Harborough Mail report from earlier in the year interesting:

Firefighters were called out to another blaze at Harborough District Council's recycling facility.

Fire crews from Harborough were called out to Pebble Hall Farm off the A4304 Lutterworth Road in Theddingworth at about 3pm on Thursday (May 7).

They arrived to find about 700 tonnes of compostable material on fire.

It is the third time in just over a month that firefighters have attended the site.

I sense that this story will run and run.

No comments: