Sandwell Local Plan - Issues & Options Consultation

10. Waste Management

The BCCS contained a strategic policy on waste management that identified several locations across the Black Country where new waste facilities could be developed. Managing waste in a responsible way is an important element of sustainable development and facing up to climate change. This can be achieved in various ways, including: -

• by addressing waste as a resource;
• through minimising waste;
• by managing unavoidable waste in ways that will minimise harmful effects; and
• by providing sufficient waste management capacity to meet current and future requirements of Sandwell.

The SAD contains a policy on the design of new waste management facilities (SAD EMP3) and dealt with more site-specific issues under the work undertaken on the regeneration corridors.

36) Question – Strategic Waste Management

As part of the Black Country Waste Study 2020, a review of waste management capacity and land availability was undertaken within the context of the predominantly urban nature of the Black Country, which retains large areas of existing employment uses in adopted plans. However, an ongoing agenda of regeneration projects and initiatives designed to diversify employment, reverse population decline and improve the environment of the Black Country all imply greater challenges to the retention or provision of increasingly nonconforming uses (e.g. waste and recycling facilities and activities).

In most situations, development for housing and high-quality employment will always yield greater revenues than waste management and recovery use. Whilst viable development depends on the interplay of location, abnormal development costs, policy requirements and landowner expectations that can only be evaluated on a site-by-site bases, there are significant areas where land use has changed to housing development – and there is ample evidence of this being an ongoing trend through planning applications and promotions.

At a national level, areas of previously developed land saved for potential waste use are being lost to other forms of development and existing waste capacity is being threatened. This is likely to be a particular issue in the Black Country, where the waste sector is comparatively more important to the local economy than in England as a whole.

As waste facilities are an essential part of the total infrastructure of an area, it is not only important that they are appropriately located but also that policy protection is applied to areas suitable for waste uses, to help achieve the objectives of moving waste up the hierarchy and enabling communities to take responsibility for waste arising in their area.

37) Question – Protection and Location of Waste Facilities