Waste Management Sites

Adam Jogee Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2026 Westminster Hall

[Lorraine Beavers (Blackpool North and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of waste management sites on local communities.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison.

For nearly three years, the people of Fleetwood have been forced to live with an intolerable smell from the Jameson Road landfill site. They have complained, protested and reported the effects on their health to the council, the Environment Agency, the Government and to me, their Member of Parliament. Over the past two and a half years, the Environment Agency has taken increasingly severe action against the operator of the site. Each time, the operator has breached its permit and acted unlawfully in the process, and still the smell remains. At times recently, it has been worse than ever. In March of this year alone, more than 4,000 complaints were made.

The central point that I wish to make is that this is proof of a broken regulatory system. Residents can make thousands of complaints, and people and businesses can be forced to leave an area because of an operator acting unlawfully, and still they are left breathing the same foul air. If our system cannot prevent that from happening, it is broken. If the regulatory system’s purpose is to record suffering, issue notices and hold meetings, but not to prevent suffering for the local community, its purpose and objectives are the wrong way around. In Fleetwood, it is as simple as this: a private company is making money from stinking out the entire town and damaging livelihoods, breaking the law in the process, while the British state appears too weak, too slow and too broken to stop it.

[Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend knows—we have discussed this many times—we in Newcastle-under-Lyme know all about the impact that the idea of profit over people can have on the health and wellbeing of communities such as hers and mine, and about the consequences of landfill sites. She is right to say that this is a case of the state going missing in action. I look forward to working with her to ensure that we get the policies needed to keep our communities safe, our air clean and our people living in the situations we want them to live in.

[Lorraine Beavers]

I agree. I hope that we will get that done—or start the battle to do so—today.

Absurdly, none of the waste is even from Fleetwood. It seems that waste can be transported from across the country to any landfill site that is happy to take it—a form of waste tourism. The waste comes from outside Lancashire, harming people and the environment in the process. Of course, working-class northern communities such as mine are allowed to be collateral damage. This is not just about Fleetwood; communities across the country have found themselves trapped in the same nightmare that we have experienced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

You have never said that before, Dr Murrison. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) for securing the debate. As I said in my intervention, I know she is committed to working on the same issues that I have spent much of my first few years in this House working on.

In my first Westminster Hall speech as the MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, I said I would not stop going on about Walleys Quarry landfill site until it is closed, capped and restored. It is now closed; capping is, broadly speaking, in operation; and soon, all being well, we will be able to get it restored so that local people in my community can use it. I am proud that after almost a year and a half since the closure notice was issued, we finally chased the cowboy operators of that landfill site out of our town and shut Walleys for good

As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood described, and as the Minister knows, because I have told her many times, for far too long, my community was blighted by respiratory irritation, headaches, disrupted sleep, mental health strain and a constant foul odour in the air from high levels of hydrogen sulphide. We were blighted by pollution and constant worry. Children could not play outside, schools could not open their windows and, disgracefully, it reached the corridors of the Royal Stoke hospital. Furthermore, many older people were left housebound.

My hon. Friend talked about putting people before polluters. I would say we must also put people over profits. These operators—I am afraid to say this, but I will be as polite as I can—took the proverbial out of my constituents. The sooner we hold those who did so to account, the better it is for all of us. They had no interest in operating safely, no regard for the community and no idea how to be a good neighbour to those who suffered the worst excesses of their criminality.

My relationship with the Environment Agency has changed in recent years. With our zero-tolerance approach to waste crime, we finally got Walleys closed—just 147 days after my party won the election. This transformed life for my community. It is a shame to say this, but for years we had a Conservative Government, a Conservative MP, a Conservative county council in Staffordshire and a Conservative Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council, and to quote a Prime Minister, “nothing changed”.

It should not have taken a change in Government for action to be taken, for the criminals to be held to account and for the damned site to be closed. I acknowledge the campaigning work of my predecessor; I am just sorry that his colleagues were missing in action. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Dr Hudson), is a friend of mine, and I am not directing this at him personally, but my community was let down by the Conservative Government, and we will not let his colleagues forget it.

It is unforgiveable that local people in Blackpool, Newcastle-under-Lyme and other parts of the country are left living in unliveable situations such as this, so I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister touched on the benefits of a fit-and-proper-person test for those seeking a permit to operate a landfill site. I also urge the Minister to engage with her colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government regarding planning permissions, as noted by the hon. Member for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson), for homes being built in the shadows—or should I say fumes—of landfill sites. Until we get a grip of the waste sector and the crime we find in it, we should not be building homes around those sites.

As I have done many times, I thank all those who helped to get the job done and close Walleys Quarry, including my colleagues in Government and in the Environment Agency, who worked with us to ensure we could clean our air and give the good people of Newcastle-under-Lyme the quality of life that they deserve. There is more to do, and I look forward to working with colleagues in Blackpool and around the country to ensure that we do it.