Waste Management Sites

Debate between Adam Jogee and Lorraine Beavers

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.