Cabinet agrees 20-year forward plan for minerals and waste
A blueprint for the future of mineral prospecting and waste management in Buckinghamshire will get its second airing amongresidents, stakeholders and operators from March 5.
Buckinghamshire County Council’s Cabinet agreed yesterday (Monday January 8) to recommend to February’s full council that their revised Minerals and Waste Local Plan for the next 20 years should go to formal public consultation before being sent to Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, for examination.
Officers have made changes to the original plan using strong feedback from acounty-wide community and stakeholder consultation, and an online survey, in August and September.
A key change has been the deletion of an existing industrial site at Ashridge Road, Chesham, and a proposed Milton Keynes fringe site from the27 potential locations for waste management operations, saidBill Chapple OBE, Cabinet Member for Planning and Environment.
And in the light of the deletions, officers have recalculated how much waste the county is likely to generate in the life of the plan, and reassessed the potential capacity of the remaining preferred waste management locations in the plan.
Bill said: “This plan has to balance the needs of our amenities and our natural and historic environment, with the demands for future mineral extraction, and the need to manage Buckinghamshire’s waste.
“In other words, we’ve had toensure there’s a steady and adequate supply of aggregates andforecast our future waste management needs, taking account of growth set out in the district local plans, and we’re as sure as we can be that we’ve given our very best estimates.”
Bill said the plan will be reviewed every five years to ensure it is kept up to date.
An easy-to-understand summary of the revised plan will be published on the County Council website for the formal consultation.