Appeal Court bid fails to knock out Whitemoss plans
OPPONENTS to plans for a huge hazardous waste landfill site near Skelmersdale have failed in a legal bid to block the project.
Campaigners said there was simply no need for the controversial facility, which has a planned capacity of 150,000 tonnes of waste per year.
But Greg Clark MP gave the scheme the go-ahead in May last year during his brief tenure as Communities and Local Government Secretary.
He also opened the way for Whitemoss Landfill Ltd to compulsorily purchase private land off White Moss Lane South to make way for the project.
With the backing of campaign group Action to Reduce and Recycle Our Waste (Arrow), neighbouring landowner Arthur Scarisbrick battled to overturn Mr Clark’s decision at the Appeal Court in London.
But senior planning judge Lord Justice Lindblom said that he could detect no legal flaw in the Secretary of State’s ruling.
Mr Clark, he said, was entitled to focus on the “considerable” strategic need for Britain to be self-sufficient in hazardous waste disposal sites.
But he said he did not treat that as an “automatically overriding factor” when balancing the disadvantages of the scheme against long-term public benefits.
There was also a local and regional need for the facility and Mr Clark said there were “very special circumstances” justifying the development in the Green Belt.
The judge, sitting with Lord Justice Irwin, said: “I do not accept that... the Secretary of State fell into error.”
He said he “neither misinterpreted nor misapplied” government policy on nationally significant hazardous waste infrastructure projects.
And Mr Clark was also entitled to find that there was “a compelling case” for compulsory acquisition of the site so that the project could proceed.
The area is already home to a hazardous waste landfill site, but that was due to close in 2018, the court was earlier told.
But the new one, to be developed on neighbouring land, is set to remain active until 2035 said David Wolfe QC, for Mr Scarisbrick.
The issue of whether there was a real need for the site on Green Belt land is “hotly disputed”, added the barrister.
The existing site only uses a fraction of its 150,000 tons-ayear capacity, he argued.
But Lord Justice Lindblom rejected claims that consent for the new one was simply nodded through “without limit or scrutiny”.
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