The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) for the eloquent way in which he raised this case, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) for underlining the concerns felt by his constituents. This debate demonstrates in a particular setting—two settings, in fact—the way in which my Department’s priorities interact. First, however, I first want to say on a purely human level that I have huge sympathy for the constituents of my hon. and learned Friend, and wish to ensure that any business of this kind is a good neighbour.
To set the debate in context, we want the rural economy to grow, and rendering plants provide an important service to the farming and food producing community by taking waste and animal by-products and processing them for further use or disposal. Such plants are strictly regulated by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency to ensure that animal by-products are handled and processed safely and do not present a risk to public or animal health. They contribute importantly to our priority of safeguarding animal health but, like all businesses, they should be good neighbours.
This particular plant takes in low-risk material from abattoirs and cutting plants but does not take in fallen stock. It turns that material into high-quality processed animal protein for the pet food industry. It gets inspected quarterly by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency, and was last inspected on 15 January—I suspect it will be small comfort to the constituents of my hon. and learned Friend, but in that inspection all was found to be satisfactory.
The Department’s priority is clearly to improve the environment, and rendering plants are subject to integrated pollution prevention and control under a European directive of that name. That directive has been recast in a somewhat strengthened form into the industrial emissions directive, which we transposed last month. Under integrated pollution prevention and control, each rendering plant must have a permit from the environmental regulator that contains conditions on any pollutant likely to be emitted in significant quantities. Pollution is defined in the directive to include the emission of anything that may
“result in damage to material property, or impair or interfere with amenities and other legitimate uses of the environment;”.
Odour and noise are plainly covered by that.
In this case the environmental regulator is Harborough district council. In accordance with the secondary legislation that introduced the EU system of integrated pollution prevention and control in England, the council first issued a permit for the rendering plant in May 2003 and updated it in November 2008. That permit is readily available on the web.
The permit requires all emissions to air from the plant to be free from offensive odour as perceived by the local authority inspector outside the plant site boundary. As we have heard, a group of residents consider themselves to be continuously and adversely affected by odour from the plant. Following their complaints, in May 2012 Harborough district council compiled a report to determine the impact of odour from the plant on the local community and whether any breaches of the permit had occurred.
A second report for the same purposes was compiled last month. Between them, the reports show that the council officers undertook a total of 64 visits to the vicinity of the site between January and November 2012, some in the company of the complainants’ representatives. Between January and April 2012, an offensive odour was found on one of the 30 visits. Between September and November, the period covered by the second report, an offensive odour was found on one of the 34 visits. That in no way diminishes the points made by my hon. and learned Friend or my hon. Friend. I entirely take their constituents’ concerns as they stated them.
The council’s reports point out that the Secretary of State’s guidance for the rendering sector, issued in 2008, recognises that occasional escapes of offensive odour may occur from rendering processes. The guidance is that formal enforcement action may not be needed if there are no more than two such instances in a 12-month period, provided remedial action is taken rapidly.
In the first of the two instances of offensive odour found in 2012, further visits were undertaken on the day but no further offensive odours were found. In the second instance, a problem with the abatement technology on site was identified and, I understand, rectified as soon as possible. The council, taking into account that guidance but making its decision in line with its enforcement policy, has therefore determined that no enforcement action is to be taken. That is a matter for the district council as regulator, but I understand that my hon. and learned Friend is concerned about it.
The district council has investigated the residents group’s complaint about noise. The council’s officers deemed noise emissions to be extremely low, of negligible impact and not in breach of the plant’s permit conditions. I can only report that; I am sure that the residents might have a differing view. I understand that the council’s recent offer to the complainant of sound-monitoring equipment to enable further investigation has been declined.
The district council has correctly pointed out to the residents concerned the availability of private action if they remain of the view that odour from the plant is significantly impacting on the use and enjoyment of their premises. The district council has also pointed out to the residents that they can contact the site manager of the plant if they experience odour problems.
The district council has recommended that the company operating the plant explore methods to abate odours likely to be considered offensive. That is where the possibility of progress might be found. I am pleased to note that the company appears to have needed little prompting in that regard. I understand that it is developing proposals for a new raw material reception facility, which my hon. and learned Friend described, a replacement effluent treatment plant and the installation of a thermal oxidiser. I am slightly dismayed to hear my hon. Friend say that such improvements have not addressed the problem, but let us look to the future positively.
According to my Department’s experts, those proposals, if carried through, should lead to an improvement in the environmental performance of the plant, while developing its business. They should deal not only with odour emissions, but with emissions of ammonia to contiguous watercourses. My hon. and learned Friend alluded to an event that the company is holding in Market Harborough between 3 and 7 pm tomorrow, 6 March at which those proposals will be described to local people, enabling them to comment. I hope that the event, which I understand is being publicised in leaflets to local residents, will help to enable the company to move forward in delivering environmental improvements, while not only continuing to make its distinctive contribution to the rural economy and society but, one hopes, being a good or better neighbour to those who live around it. That would be entirely the best solution, and I trust that it will meet the concerns expressed so eloquently by my hon. and learned Friend on behalf of his constituents.
All Members of Parliament have a depressing sense of déjà vu when we come across “neighbours from hell” issues and the path of least resistance is for the agency—whether it is a housing agency, local authority or the police—to require people to keep a log. There is a feeling among too many people that that is a delaying tactic. However, I hope that with the proposed measures we will find a way forward.
Sir Edward Garnier
May I say how grateful I am to my hon. Friend for his measured response to me and my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer)? I am puzzled by the suggestion he has gathered from the district council that my constituents declined to make use of sound monitoring devices. That is not my information. I am slightly concerned that the information he has received from the district council confirms the air of complacency I discussed at the beginning of my remarks. That is not the fault or problem of my hon. Friend the Minister. I know that he is simply acting as an unwilling mouthpiece for the district council, and that this is the system in which we have to operate in these sorts of Adjournment debates. However, may I, through him, urge the district council to up its game and not brush this matter under the carpet, and to ensure that these genuine concerns, concerns confirmed by the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Newark, are properly taken account of?
Richard Benyon
I entirely accept my hon. and learned Friend’s point. The information I have shared with the House is only as good as that given to my Department by the council. There is clearly a discrepancy between what my hon. and learned Friend has been told and what I have been told. I hope that this will be clarified in the near future and that the changes the company are making will resolve the issue. I recognise his point that this is a matter over which the local authority has control: it has to address the clearly genuine concerns of local people. These are not the kind of vexatious claims that one might hear from an individual who may object to a particular type of business for the wrong reasons. This is a consistent concern for a large proportion of those who live nearby, and is therefore something that the local authority needs to address. He and I are in a business where perceptions are reality. If that is the perception, then it needs to be addressed as a reality by the local authority.
Question put and agreed to.