KCC gives go-ahead for waste facilities
Eighty construction and waste operation jobs are to be created in Sandwich.
Waste firm TW Services, which has a 20-acre site close to the disused Richborough power station, has been granted planning permission by Kent County Council to create an energy park and expand the recycling service at two sites along the Ramsgate Road. One is at the existing TW Service land at Richborough Hall, the other at the derelict former Astra Fireworks grounds, also on the Ramsgate Road.
A £22 million investment, in addition to £7 million already ploughed into the current site, will be pumped into a recycling facility for paper, cardboard, plastics, glass and metals and processes for dealing with construction waste
Spencer Ray, director of the family-owned business, said: "We can proudly say that we are providing a local solution to a local problem.
"Over the past three years we have worked hard on issues concerning the newly formed East Kent Joint Waste Contract 2010. Planning permission for our site means we are moving rapidly towards zero waste to landfill."
The scheme is separate from that of the one being consulted on for the neighbouring Richborough power station where similar facilities are also proposed but a planning application is yet to be made.
Mr Ray said: "Unlike other proposals to develop an energy park at Richborough, we are starting now. We obtained planning permission on May 10 and construction will start in the next month.
"We are providing modern facilities creating the infrastructure needed to increase recycling capacity on the site that will handle waste from Dover, Shepway, Thanet and Canterbury for the next ten years and beyond."
The facility is expected to handle 750,000 tonnes of waste each year, including municipal waste, food and green waste, construction and demolition waste, commercial and industrial waste, wood and hazardous waste, with the aim of recycling it all.
It could aid KCC's waste management plans to dispose of all Kent's household waste within the county. T W Services will take the waste collected by Veolia Environmental Services in Dover and Shepway, and from 2013 from Canterbury and Thanet.
The disused Astra site has had some clearance and work is under way to relocate a colony of rare Lizard Orchids closer to the entrance and roadside verge and to move grass snakes, slow worms and common lizards to another area.
In a report to KCC members, who approved the application, planning officer Andrea Hopkins says: "The proposed development would assist in tackling the effects of climate change and is valuable to renewable energy generation."
She adds that TW Services' new facility will make a "contribution towards our aim to further increase recycling and composting and to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill".
Source: Thisiskent.co.uk
