Waste planning is a Gloucestershire County Council responsibility.  The Gloucestershire Waste Core Strategy (WCS) was adopted in 2012 and covers the period up to 2027.  CPRE input to the various consultations on the Strategy and we were pleased with the outcome where many of our points were incorporated in the final version.

The WCS includes a range for the amount of municipal waste expected to be produced in Gloucestershire by 2028. As the volume of waste that will need to be handled has continued to decline since the WCS was adopted, it now looks as though the lower end of the range is more likely than the upper end. This is reinforced by the latest projections by the ONS that household sizes will not be getting smaller. Larger households produce less waste per capita. We will keep this in mind in assessing the need for waste treatment facilities and in our lobbying of the County Council on waste issues.

In the light of the above, CPRE was opposed to the Javelin Park incinerator.  This major energy from waste plant in now under construction.  Located near junction 12 of the M5 on the southern approaches to Gloucester and close to the Cotswolds AONB, we raised concerns about landscape impacts but we also believe that Gloucestershire could land up with an incinerator too large for the county’s needs and would be forced to bring in other counties’ waste to make the facility viable.  We were pleased that the County Council’s planning committee accepted these arguments and refused a planning application for such a facility unanimously.  However, the decision was successfully appealed, and a subsequent legal objection lodged by Stroud District Council was dismissed in the courts, clearing the way for construction to begin.

The Branch has produced a policy statement on waste planning and management.