Angry planners fight Pebsham plan

Rother wants answers from the county council to a string of key questions.

Cllr Peter Fairhurst publicly accused the county council - planning authority for the application - of sharp practice in filing the matter on December 23 and giving objectors 28 days in which to respond.

"That was totally unacceptable. I think it amounts almost to deceit. It is immoral."

The planning committee was meeting a day before the county deadline.

Rother officers had recommended that Rother should raise no objection to the waste transfer station scheme other than over the proposed 6am-10.30pm seven-days-a-week operating hours.

Cllr Fairhurst said: "The recommendation as printed is completely unacceptable. This would be a gross intrusion on people's quality of life."

Working hours would be nearly three times the typical working week.

"The impact on the neighbours would be dreadful."

He alleged that noise readings had been taken from the top of Hastings Road - on the far side of Pebsham estate from the proposed plant.

The applicants' agents say the plant would sort and bulk-up for recycling 85,000 tonnes of waste a year.

Cllr Fairhurst said not only would neighbours suffer from dust and air pollution but the constant "beep, beep" of lorry reversing hooters.

The applicants had said that "smart" technology could reduce the noise.

Cllr Fairhurst said: "The point of a beeper is that people can hear when a lorry is reversing. You cannot have one without the other...."

In a survey of less than two hours he counted 400 vehicles using the tip access road. There were already unacceptable levels of air pollution yet there were three schools within one kilometre.

"Each of these issues taken in isolation would breach Human Rights!"

The way the people of Pebsham had been treated was "abominable."

Among speakers backing him was fellow ward councillor Charles Clark. How could the proposed plant be reconciled with plans for the Pebsham Countryside Park.

Cllr Brian Kentfield said the application quoted only the vehicles from Hastings which would use the plant.

"There is no mention anywhere in this report of the other authorities which use this site - Rother District Council, Eastbourne, part of Wealden."

He told colleagues: "County have left us high and dry."

There would be so many lorry movements that claims that the plant's doors would be kept shut to reduce noise and pollution were nonsense.

He said Rother should demand answers from the county council.