Albert Road Waste Facility - UPDATE

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Published on Sunday, 18 March 2012 09:30

Written by Allan Keen

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Development plans for Albert Road waste site.

Bristol City Council has now passed the Albert Road waste site planning application and it will become a centralised site for recycling and waste disposal.

By the end of 2012 the city council wants to move most of its waste collection and recycling operation for Bristol to the St Phillips site in Albert Road. This would free up the Sea Mills Lane site for a housing development, raising £1.5 million in the process. That money could then be used to fund a public household waste recycling centre for Hartcliffe Way. The council already has two of these – in Folly Lane, St Phillips and at the Kingsweston Lane site in Avonmouth, but none for the south of the city.

Currently the entire site is split with Part A (see picture above) occupied by SITA and Part B occupied by WH White: 'Allmead', a commercial waste disposal company. The proposals indicate that this company would be offered a new lease at a site Avonmouth for 2012 releasing the Albert Road site for full use by the council's own waste services. As such Bristol City Council claim this does not mean a 'change of use' so no public consultation is required. This was of great concern to TRESAcic and we sought clarification on this point.

If every recycling and waste vehicle in the city has to use Albert Road, it could mean an increase in traffic along the three main access roads – Bath Road, St Phillips Causeway and Avon Street. This is also an area for concern despite Council claims that the traffic footprint "will be similar" to the present use of the site. The current change of the road use and limited Totterdown Bridge access because of the Greater Bristol Bus Network planning does not lend itself to good access to the Albert Road site by waste vehicles and may increase the traffic congestion in the whole area. There are likely to be greater noise and other pollution issues to be addressed.

UPDATE: 18th March 2012.

The application has now been passed by the city council. There are now conditions being put in place for the development of the site. Local councillors Mark Bailey and Alf Havvok (who also raised their concerns) are going to monitor this carefully to make sure the local area is not inconvenienced by May Gurney's site operation. TRESAcic has monitored the situation closely and sought clarification. A 'No Consultation' policy was overturned and consultations sort on developments at the site. However, these conditions are still questionable in TRESAcic's view, such as operations from 7am to 7pm weekdays, some weekend working after public holidays, large noise screens rather than recycling things like glass inside a building. With the passing of the application we can do no more other than keep an eye on the site to make sure it observes the conditions.

Thanks to James for making contributions to the consultation on behalf of TRESAcic.

To read the council's planning conditions and the original planning application in full see the attachments below.

Attachments:

Albert Road Conditions	274 Kb
Albert Road Council Proposals	260 Kb