Viridor submit Incinerator planning application

It has finally happened. After three months of saying they were on the brink of submitting a planning application for an incinerator, this week Viridor finally delivered their plans to Devon County Council.

Now that Viridor’s planning application is in the open we need to ramp up our work opposing it. As I said here our arguments must be based on sound evidence. These positions are being brought together now by a cross-party community group and will be shared for local people to use in their own correspondence with the planners.

To defeat this planning application we need three things: 1) sound arguments based on planning; 2) an overwhelming community letter and email writing campaign that puts planning arguments in your own words highlighting your objection to the application and finally 3) a united community front so that Viridor cannot divide and conquer our community.

I’m not surprised that this faceless corporate giant has ignored residents’ opposition and pushed ahead with their plans. Their primary loyalty is to their shareholders not local residents and no amount of glossy leaflets, CSR reports or warm words will hide that. The company monitors opposition to its scheme closely and they know how Ivybridge and Lee Mill residents feel about their scheme and they’ve decided to ignore you and brush your concerns aside.

Of course, Viridor claim that they will “engage with the community” during the planning process. Based on their track record of a few poorly drafted leaflets, some expensively produced exhibition stands that have a lot of words but say very little and refusing to attend public meetings until the last minute we should be rightfully skeptical about this promise. Their community consultation to date has been little more than a PR exercise and I suspect that the coming ‘engagement’ will amount to little more than the bare minimum to satisfy planners that they have met basic requirements.

Since Frankie Dolan and myself started pushing this issue into the public domain – and in so doing so embarrassing our local MP, Gary Streeter into action – we have amassed a huge community mailing list via ecoivy.org. There are now over 1,000 members of the Facebook group I started opposing the incinerator and hundreds of people have attended demonstrations and public meetings. Our task is to turn each member of the Facebook group and every EcoIvy email recipient into a community activist – we need you to object to Viridor’s application. We’ll be sharing how to do so in the coming weeks.

So, what can you do now? If you haven’t joined the EcoIvy.org mailing list – you should do so. If you haven’t joined the Facebook group – you should do so. Once Viridor’s planning application has been studied, which it is at the moment, we need the arguments against it to be shared and delivered in the heaviest mail sack Devon County Council’s planning committee has ever seen.

Viridor have pushed ahead with this application knowing they’re going to have to fight to win planning permission. If it is a fight they want it is a fight they will get. Let Viridor be in no doubt whatsoever we will fight and we will fight them all the way – and what’s more with the whole community against their plans I think we might just win.

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