News Composting plans get green light
A farmer has won planning permission to remove constraints placed on his composting operations.
Mr C. S. Backhouse, who farms Commons Farm at Rawcliffe Bridge, has been spreading non-animal organic by-products on his site since he received planning permission for composting in August 2006.
However, the permission which allows him to spread compost for a temporary period of three years, led to a public outcry in Rawcliffe Bridge.
Local residents, backed by Rawcliffe Parish Council, claimed foul smells emanating from the organic waste were affecting neighbouring properties around Bridge Lane.
To mitigate against this, planning chiefs with the East Riding of Yorkshire Council attached a number of conditions which forbade Mr Backhouse from storing the compost in certain designated areas and not within 250 metres of residential properties.
At a meeting last week, members of the East Riding's Planning Committee agreed to remove conditions banning Mr Backhouse from spreading compost in certain designated areas, but maintained that the waste must be more than 250 metres away from neighbouring properties.
The second condition which Mr Backhouse asked to be removed - that compost must not be stored within 10 metres of any rivers, streams, ditches or ponds - was retained with the farmer's blessing.
So, too, was the condition that the spreading of compost should be limited to 20 days a year and from Monday to Thursday.
Again, Mr Backhouse agreed to this as well as no spreading on Bank or public holidays.
However, he did ask for restrictions that allowed him to spread compost only between 9am and 4pm to be altered to 7am to 6pm in line with the normal agricultural working day.
And he also asked for the restriction banning him from spreading on Fridays to be removed, which was agreed by the Planning Committee so long as Mr Backhouse sticks to "pre-agreed" areas that are more than 800 metres away from neighbouring properties.
The decision to relax or remove of some of the conditions comes despite more than 44 letters of objection being sent to the county council as well as a petition containing 125 signatures.
The complainants, including Rawcliffe Parish Council, claimed that the removal or relaxation of the conditions would make the odour problems worse and affect residents' quality of life.
A subsequent investigation by the council's Public Protection department found none of these complaints had been proved.
Published on 7th August 2008 in News.
Add to: Digg | del.icio.us | Reddit
Comments
There are currently no comments
Comments are closed for this article.