Waste site ordered to stop making so much noise - Swift-Hook & Drummond

3.42.33pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 20th Oct 2009

After sustained pressure from Greenham's councillors and affected local residents, and a prolonged and detailed investigation by Council officers, last week West Berkshire Council served a Noise Abatement Notice on the operators of the new Household Waste Recycling Centre at Newtown Road (locally known as Abbotswood).

The site finally opened for business last October following two years of controversy - including a planning meeting where over 100 members of the public were ejected after only 20 minutes -- and protests from campaigning Greenham councillors and local residents claiming that was built in the wrong place.

Almost as soon as it opened, complaints about noise started pouring in from residents of Deadmans Lane, whose homes are directly opposite the new site.

Greenham Councillors Swift-Hook and Drummond have been hard at work ever since, pressing West Berkshire Council to take action on the noise.

"Deadmans Lane residents have been suffering for a long time, living with the bangs and crashes that comes from the site at all times of the day, and it's a great relief, especially to them, that at last something is being done to put an end to it," said Councillor Swift-Hook.

"As well as organising a residents' meeting earlier in the year, I have been working behind the scenes with Council officers for many months to get them to issue a Noise Abatement Notice. It's a complex and long-winded process, with lots of legal details that have to be covered, and it needed a lot of help from the residents themselves, making daily logs of the noise problems and letting Council officers into their homes to carry out monitoring."

Councillor Drummond added, "It has taken a long time, but at last the residents can see that the Council has officially recognised their problem and is now doing something about it."

Issuing the Noise Abatement Notice does not mean an immediate end to the excessive noise from the site, but it is the first critical step in the formal process to force the site operator to stop their operations from making so much noise. Although the site operator now has to take action to reduce noise or face further legal action, the Notice gives them a certain amount of time within which to do so.

"Issuing the Notice is at last official recognition that the waste site is making too much noise - something we have all known for a year," said Councillor Swift-Hook. "It is not an instant cure, but it is the first essential step in the formal process to put an end to the residents' suffering."