24 April 2009

TEMPORARY WASTE DEPOT SITES

Dear Sir/ Madam

In November 2007 Lambeth Council moved most of its vehicle fleet from the Shakespeare Road depot to make way for construction of the new Evelyn Grace Academy which will provide 1,200 much-needed secondary school places in the borough. Since this time the transport, waste and refuse vehicle fleets have operated out of four temporary sites, while research is undertaken to find a suitable permanent site.

The temporary sites are:

•    Vale Street Household Recycling Centre
•    Shakespeare Road Depot (residual site)
•    Angela Davis Industrial Estate
•    Mahatma Gandhi Industrial Estate.

The waste industry is changing rapidly and there is now a pressing need to consider issues such as increased recycling rates and initiatives such as providing energy from household and business waste. These and other changes to the national waste and sustainability agenda have the potential to significantly affect the shape of the council’s waste service. For this reason, the council is developing a new ‘Waste Strategy’ for the borough which will define how waste is collected and managed both now and in the future. As this is likely to have a major impact on related vehicle depots, the council has decided to postpone any major investment in
a depot until the Waste Strategy has been completed. The Waste Strategy will go to the council’s cabinet in late 2009 and is expected to be adopted in spring 2010.

In the meantime, we need to ensure the waste service is not disrupted. The temporary planning permissions for depot sites are due to end either later this year or early in 2010. For this reason we will be applying to extend planning permission for the temporary use of these sites for up to four years.

As part of the planning application, we have undertaken traffic and environmental impact assessments for each of the temporary sites.



Next steps

The council will submit new temporary planning applications in late April 2009. The Lambeth Planning team will then send a letter to residents in the immediate vicinity of the four sites as part of the statutory consultation process. This will be your formal opportunity to comment on the proposals.

Details of Lambeth’s planning procedures can be found at http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/Services/HousingPlanning/Planning/.

More details on Lambeth’s Waste Strategy can be found at http://www.lambeth.gov.uk/Services/Environment/RubbishWasteRecycling/.

If you do not live in close proximity to one of the sites you can still feed into the process by email tpac@lambeth.gov.uk or by writing to TPAC, Phoenix House, 10 Wandsworth Road, London SW8 2LL. You can also view the plans at http://planning.lambeth.gov.uk/publicaccess.


Yours sincerely


The Future Lambeth Team

Freephone: 0800 052 6336
Email: TempDepot@lambeth.gov.uk