Action 4 Essington

The Annual Essington Parish meeting has not seen such a high attendance for many a long year.  The hall was filled with residents and there was just one item on the agenda. A proposed bottom ash storage facility (B8 use) at the old Brickworks Site in Hobnock Road.

Councillor Clifft, Chairman of Essington Parish Council, stated two applications for planning permission were due in from the developers of the site some time this month.  One for B8 (bottom ash storage) and one for the housing development that the Parish Council have been working so hard towards with the developers for some time.

We can’t have a ‘do nothing’ approach to the site.  Residents have to get behind the housing development one hundred percent if we are to have a chance of heading off the B8 use application.

The upshot of the meeting is that there is shortly to be an official poll of residents asking them if they would prefer the housing development, yes or no.  The precise wording of the poll will be published when legal eagles have taken a look at it.

South Staffordshire District Councillor, Wayne Whitehouse, opened up a can of worms for us when he opened his mouth without engaging his brain and saddled Essington residents with the possibility of a Bottom Ash Storage Site (B8 use) on the Old Brickworks site.  Obviously he was steered in that direction by the faceless mandarins at Staffordshire District Council who favour the site for the dumping of bottom ash that will be generated by the Four Ashes incinerator.

Once again Essington is the prime target. Perhaps South Staffs planning officers don’t like our village or think it is far enough away from places such as Codsall, Wombourne, Kinver and the like so they won’t have to see the results of their conniving.

Essington Parish Councillors took District Councillor Whitehouse to task over the issue and there was a unanimous vote of ‘no confidence’ against him. That doesn’t change the fact that the ‘cat is out of the bag’ now with regard to possible B8 use on the site.  We can only try to go forward as a community and take actions to stop this, if we can.

As Councillor Clifft pointed out, perhaps Essington will be the first to test the new ’Localism’ planning bill that has just gone through Parliament which states that residents must be consulted and have a big say in what they want to see happen in their community.

When the polling card drops through your letterbox use your vote or lose the fight to keep Essington a village rather than an industrial wasteland.