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Fairfield Piggeries
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Knapman.]
10 pm
Mr. David Faber (Westbury): I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of Fairfield Piggeries in Bradford-on-Avon on behalf of hundreds, even thousands, of my constituents, who have for years had to put up with appalling smells and environmental harm. I regret the need for this debate, which comes at the end of several years of consideration by West Wiltshire district council and the Department of the Environment. I hope that it will mark the culmination of my correspondence with the Secretary of State and the communication between the council and the Department.
It may be helpful if I explain some of the background. Fairfield Piggeries has been running under its current ownership for some 50 years, and has 5,000 pigs. Several people have suggested that people who live in the countryside near farms should learn to live with agricultural smells, but the smells concerned are not those of the pigs but of the waste rendering process, about which we have heard much during the bovine spongiform encephalopathy scare.
The smell is noxious; it is industrial and chemical rather than agricultural. There are two rendering cookers on the site for the waste that is brought to it. One heats up waste food--vats of butter, bread, pizza, cakes; anything that can be got rid of locally. The second, more controversially, renders dead poultry. The carcases of turkeys and chickens are left on the site in skips. The resulting liquid feed is pumped through pipes to 5,000 pigs. The fumes should, technically, be removed by a biological filter bed.
In recent years, the smell from the plant has broken out way beyond the boundaries of the farm. The community of Bradford Leigh suffers an almost permanent nuisance, especially in summer when it becomes stifling. In summer, people driving past have to wind up their windows, children cannot play in gardens, and local residents cannot open their windows at night. The main reason for this debate is the delay in my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's redetermining the appeal of the owners of the piggeries.
In October 1992--more than four years ago--the piggery owners applied to West Wiltshire district council for authorisation to carry out the rendering process, as required under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The council refused authorisation and, in March 1994, the owners filed an appeal against the council. On 23 and 24 August 1994, a section 15 public appeal hearing was held in Bradford-on-Avon and the Secretary of State's inspector, Mr. Jarvis, heard evidence from the main parties, local residents and organisations. Naturally, he also visited the site. He concluded that the company was unlikely to be able to carry on the rendering process so as to comply effectively with the Environmental Protection Act 1990. He also concluded that the crucial test of the management practices was being failed because the emissions should not have caused an offensive smell outside the process boundary. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's own inspector recommended that the appeal be rejected.
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West Wiltshire district council then had to wait 12 months for my right hon. Friend's decision, which came on 2 August 1995. He overruled his own inspector. He upheld the appeal by the company and directed West Wiltshire district council to issue authorisation. There was concern at the time that the condition relating to offensive smells was left out of the authorisation, even though it had been agreed by both parties at the appeal hearing.
In September 1995, the council went ahead to judicial review. It was heard by Mr. Justice Spence on 6 March 1996. At the hearing, my right hon. Friend's decision was considered in great detail. The judge decided that the Department's reasoning was poor, that the inspector's recommendations had not been acted on and that no recognition had been made of the crucial issue of the smell outside the site boundary. The judge found in the council's favour and referred the matter back to the Department of the Environment for redetermination.
West Wiltshire district council received notification of the redetermination in a letter from the Department of 12 March this year and complied with the deadline for comments of 3 April. A second round of representations was requested in a letter of 1 May, and again it replied within the deadline set, which was 20 May. Since then, in spite of telephone calls from the council to officials, and letters from me to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, no timetable has been set for the decision to be made.
I wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on 14 March. On 2 April I received a reply from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment. He set out the process for redetermination and acknowledged my representations, but the letter contained no timetable for the decision. In a telephone call to the Department, the council was informed that the decision would take weeks rather than months to achieve. We are now at the end of November, and still no decision has been made.
On 11 July, I wrote again to my right hon. Friend, saying that I felt that the council had been tolerant in its use of language, given the extreme delay in the decision. I also pointed out that we were then well into the summer months, by which time the smells were noxious and extremely bad for local residents.
On 5 August, I received a reply from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford). He said that the appeal was being considered
What we are debating tonight, and the issue that I wish to raise with my hon. Friend the Minister this evening, is the on-going delay, which is simply unacceptable for everyone involved. I stressed earlier that the issue was not an agricultural smell but the smell of an industrial process.
The smell is chemical, not agricultural. The debate is not designed to criticise those who own and work at Fairfield Piggeries. The delay is every bit as bad for them as it is for everybody else--they are unable to plan; they have no idea of whether they will be closed down in the near future; and they do not know what level of investment will be required of them over the coming months. My view, which I have made clear to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and to local people, is that it is impossible for them to carry on the rendering process as they are and that the damage they are doing to local people's environment is simply unacceptable.
It is possible that a programme of investment such as that suggested by the district council could alleviate the problem. I understand that improvements could be made in two areas: first, a lobby building on the end of the main building where the waste enters would act as an airlock; and, secondly, improvements could be made to the abatement plant by installing one or more extra filter beds to stop the smells resulting from the rendering process.
As I said, the debate is about the inordinate length of time that my hon. Friend's Department is taking to come to a decision. Between June and September 1994, the local district council received 255 complaints from local people; in the same period for 1995, 251 complaints were received; and in the same period this year--the hottest summer months--the figure rose to 392 complaints. Local residents are justifiably angry. People who live near the piggeries cannot open their windows; their children cannot go out and play during the summer; the value of their houses has been affected; and, naturally, many have justifiable concerns about the effects on public health.
Apart from the anger expressed locally against those who own and run the piggeries, much anger is now directed at my hon. Friend's Department because of the length of time that it has taken to reach a decision. The delay has had a seriously detrimental effect on the local environment and on the company's ability to plan for the future. For the district council, it has been a frustrating process and I pay tribute to the way in which the council has dealt with the problem.
As a district council, it has its own set of specifications for the level of service it offers--it provides detailed response times and complaints procedures for local council tax payers. If the council falls out of line, the Audit Commission and the local government ombudsman are always available to investigate any mistakes. No such sanction is available to local people in respect of the Department of the Environment. The district council's hands are tied. Under the Environmental Protection
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"as quickly as possible given the available resources, as we are very conscious of the nuisance caused by animal rendering plant in hot weather. I hope that a revised decision will issue in the very near future."
I wrote again to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on 19 September at some length, following a further visit to the site the previous day. At that stage, I described the delay as intolerable and suggested that I might resort to this Adjournment debate.
As I understand it, my right hon. Friend has two options. He can accept his inspector's report and the judge's decision and refer the matter back to West Wiltshire district council for it to give authorisation or not, or he can uphold the appeal again and reach the decision by different means, as the judge criticised the way in which the decision had been reached rather than the end product. West Wiltshire district council would then have to decide whether to go back to court.
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