Consultation on bulking facility permit will happen after Senedd election

Documents made public by environment body, Natural Resources Wales (NRW) confirm that the environment permit application submitted by SLR consulting on behalf of Powys County Council, has been “duly made.”

This means that staff at NRW now believe they have enough information to start evaluating the application and work towards making a decision.

NRW have also said that as the application is one of “high public interest”, a public consultation will be held as part of the process.

NRW said: “We will be carrying out a public consultation relating to this application, this will commence no earlier than May 17 and will run for a period of six weeks.

“We have considered that this application is likely to generate a high level of public interest.

“We will be taking appropriate steps to raise awareness of the application, to ensure the public and community have the opportunity to respond to the consultation.

“Further information will be publicised in advance of the consultation.”

Villagers have opposed the scheme right from the start when Powys County Council revealed its plans to build a facility at the business park.

They now fear that black bin bag residual waste will be dealt with at the facility, and have vowed to fight any move to allow this to happen.

Powys Council’s cabinet member for waste and recycling, Councillor Heulwen Hulme has said that the facility is needed to “increase recycling rates.”

PCC propose that the site accept and process up to 22,500 tonnes a year of non-hazardous waste and a maximum of 425 tonnes is proposed at any one time.

The site is supposed to receive recycling collected from households across Montgomeryshire, where it will be squashed together or “bulked,” so that it can be more easily transported to processors to turn into new products.

In January 2020 NRW received an initial application from Powys Council which was returned to the body in February 2020 as it “lacked some of the technical information” that was needed to start the decision making process.

In August 2018, planning permission was given for the £4 million scheme.

In May 2019 the council’s cabinet voted unanimously in favour of going ahead with the scheme after a full council meeting had urged them to refuse it.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic struck, it had been expected that building work at the site would have finished and that the facility would be up and running from last October.