Waste plant battle for pub
REGULARS AT a pub in North Yorkshire are leading the fight to block plans to build a waste composting and shredding site next door.
More than 100 customers at the Black-a-Moor Inn, Bridge Hewick, have put their names to a petition urging the local council not to allow the potentially smelly site to be created adjacent to a pub where people often eat outdoors.
Regulars from the pub, run by licensees Tony and Pam Morse, were meeting with local Conservative MP David Curry last Friday in an effort to get him to back their cause.
North Yorkshire County Council has already deferred once the decision on the proposal to compost 5,000 tonnes of green waste a year ¬ but there are fears that the local authority¹s planning committee will give the project the green light when it meets again on January 16.
Barrie Evason of Jennyruth Workshops at nearby Red House Farm, which provides employment for people with learning disabilities and uses the Black-a-Moor Inn for fund-raising events, said in a letter to the council:
"Have you considered the smells from rotting waste which is being held before being dealt with?
"The government guidelines which you appear either to have ignored or glossed over in your report to councillors say that a site should not adversely affect a local community." Local farmer Peter Rogers, who owns the freehold of the pub, said local people couldn¹t believe that the plans were being seriously considered.
"These letters and objections demonstrate the strength of opposition to this plan," he said.
"Why should the council risk a country inn having to close when rural amenities are fast disappearing and there are many other sites suitable for this type of facility which are not just over the wall from where people eat?" North Yorkshire County Council confirmed that the decision on the development would be made in January.
A spokesman for the council said: "The application was due to be considered on October 10 but has been deferred to January 16 because we needed to get more information from the environmental health service."
