BACKGROUND INFORMATION

East Sussex County Council are proposing that a huge waste processing plant (almost certainly including an incinerator) be built at Mountfield to burn all the rubbish from the eastern half of East Sussex. 

They have not listened to local people and yet have already put this multi-million pound, 25-year contract out to tender. 

Mountfield is within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty: something that the present Government is committed to protecting.

An incinerator will mean hundreds of dust lorries, clogging up the roads, bringing rubbish from coastal towns into Mountfield.

(map - will take a while to download)

Once an incinerator is built it needs to be fed.  The operator will be free to bring in rubbish to burn from anywhere in the country and even from abroad.  And because the incinerators are most economical when they are large, once they exist there is little incentive to improve levels of recycling (the government conveniently classifies the use of ash from incinerators for road making as 'recycling', but it's not what most people mean when they think of recycling).

What's actually happening?

The County Council want to build a waste sorting and Energy From Waste (EfW) plant at Mountfield - in practice almost certainly an incinerator.  The Mountfield Heritage Group has been formed to fight this plan and there is every chance that we actually will be able to defeat it through the Planning Process.

The Council published the Deposit Draft of the Waste Local Plan on 1st November 2000.  This named Mountfield as the preferred site for the Waste Sorting and EfW plant for the eastern end of the county. 

From 1st November to 12th December 2000 was the official 6-week public consultation period during which individuals and representative bodies (such as the Mountfield Heritage Group) could register objections to this plan. 

Over 50,000 separate objections were received to the plan - almost a record for a local plan.

The public consultation period is followed by the publication of a revised plan, a second consultation period, probably starting on 2nd April 2002, and then a Public Inquiry which is run by a government inspector.  The Public Inquiry will probably be held in the Spring of 2003.  Mountfield Heritage Group will be represented at this Public Inquiry.  More details of the planning process.