Minded to Issue North Powys Bulking Facility PAN 018305

Overview

Powys County Council has applied for a new bespoke environmental permit under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016, to operate a new facility for the bulking of non-hazardous material from kerbside collections. They propose to accept and process up to 22,500 tonnes per year of non-hazardous waste, with a maximum of 425 tonnes on site at any one time prior to being transferred offsite for further recovery or disposal.

A previous application from Powys County Council (PAN-013001) was refused last year.  Read about why the application was refused.

The new application included additional information to be assessed. Read an outline of the additional information provided by Powys County Council.

The only treatment would be the bulking up of materials which would arrive pre sorted to site, meaning no sorting or separating of wastes on site. 

We have finished our technical assessment and have reached a draft decision that we are minded to issue the permit. This would allow Powys County Council to operate the site as set out in their application.

Before making a final decision, we are consulting on our draft decision and a draft permit.  This is to explain the decision to the public and other interested parties and to give them the opportunity to make relevant comments on our draft decision.  You can read the draft Permit and draft Decision Document below at the bottom of this page. 

We believe we have considered all of the relevant issues and reached a reasonable conclusion.  We will issue the permit in its current form unless we receive new relevant information that leads us to alter the conditions in the draft permit, or to reject the application altogether.

Our Public Participation Statement summarises our regulatory remit, what we can and can’t consider. Read our Public Participation Statement.

We can consider the following as they are with our legal remit:

• the proposed operator’s competency to meet permit conditions
• general operational management of the proposed facility
• potential impact on the environment, habitats and designated sites
• fire prevention and mitigation plans
• handling and storing of any waste
• control of any odour, noise, dust, litter and pests

There are a number of factors that do not fall within our legal remit, and on which we cannot make or base decisions.  The local authority is responsible for:

• The location of the site
• Traffic
• Visual impact
• Land use
• Whether the applicant must also undertake an Environmental Impact Assessment

Operational hours are a matter of government policy.

The public consultation will start on Friday 2 June 2023 and run for a period of four weeks, closing on Friday 30 June 2023. We will consider any relevant comments we receive and reach a final decision shortly after the consultation closes.

The consultation asks for relevant comments on the draft Permit and the draft Decision Document.  The Decision Document:

• Explains how the application has been determined
• Provides a record of the decision-making process
• Shows how all relevant factors have been taken into account
• Justifies any specific conditions in the permit other than those in our generic permit template

Unless the decision document specifies otherwise, we have accepted the applicant’s proposal.

You can look at the application documents free of charge on our online public register.  Go the public register.  You may need to download software applications to view certain documents on our on-line system – for example, if your email system isn’t compatible with Outlook. If you don’t want to do this, or if you need a document in a different format you can request a copy of the application from us.  Please note that requests may take time to process.

Please consider the information in the draft decision document, the draft permit, the public register and the public participation statement before responding to the consultation.