London’s Green MEP Jean Lambert has welcomed a decision by planners at Sutton Council not to grant planning permission for a waste incinerator to serve four boroughs of South London.

Members of Sutton Council’s Planning Committee voted this week to overturn officers’ recommendations and decided to defer a final decision on the incinerator after more than 100 pages of objections were raised.

The proposed incinerator, at Beddington Lane on the border between Croydon and Sutton, would have seen a massive increase in lorry journeys on the area’s already-congested streets, a serious deterioration of air quality, and a disincentive to further improve the borough’s rising recycling rates.

Ms Lambert, who visited the site earlier this year, said: “This incinerator would lock the councils in the South London Waste Partership (SLWP) – Sutton, Merton, Kingston and Croydon – into high levels of waste generation to meet the terms of their contract – making it impossible to adopt waste reduction measures for the life of the contract.

“This decision must be seen as a partial victory for the local people and groups who have worked so hard to oppose this plan for a single incinerator with capacity to burn 300,000 tonnes of waste from across London – and even further afield – in the shadow of South London homes and schools.

“The SLWP must now go back to the drawing board and develop a waste reduction strategy to improve local recycling and composting facilities instead.”

The application will now be considered at a future meeting.

 

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