P-05-984 Stop discriminatory remote consultations for incinerator applications during the Covid-19 Pandemic, Correspondence – Petitioner to Committee, 09.07.20
Dear Committee,
Thank you for the email below together with its attachments. I would like to make the following additional comments and respond to some of the points in the Minister’s letter to the Chair of the Petitions Committee.
For a number of years, we have known that a developer is planning to submit a planning application for a large-scale incinerator in our area. Due to the scale of the development, this is considered a “Development of National Significance” and the application will be submitted directly to the Welsh Government Planning Inspectorate, rather than to the Local Planning Authority. The DNS reference for this matter is DNS/3214813. Under the relevant and recently amended legislation, the applicant is allowed to hold their statutory public consultation as a “remote consultation” and the applicant has since announced that it intends to proceed in this way and that they will be consulting using webinars, telephone surgeries and information packs sent out in the post.
If the consultation takes place within the timescales that the incinerator applicant has indicated, then due to the Covid-19 pandemic, neither the Community Council nor myself will be able to hold public meetings, nor have face-to-face meetings with our residents about this matter. Many elderly people in my area are digitally excluded, they may not use, nor have access to the Internet and they may not feel comfortable taking part in a telephone consultation. The nature of this incinerator is highly technical, especially the matters concerning air quality, waste management and the environmental impact. Both the Community Council and I had planned and previously communicated to our residents, that during any consultation we would hold public and face-to face meetings so that we could talk people through the complicated process and documents, and do everything we could to ensure that all residents understand the application and how to make their comments known. Indeed, the incinerator applicant had also previously indicated that they would hold a public meeting and that they would have ‘drop-in’ events so that people could ask questions and understand the nature of the application. The concern that residents will not be able to meet face-to-face with either their elected representatives nor the applicant to discuss the consultation, adds to the loneliness and isolation that many of them feel already. It leaves many people in my area feeling that they are without a voice.
Thank you for the time you have taken to consider this matter which is of such significance to my residents.
Kind regards,
Amanda
Councillor Amanda Jenner