Waste Industry: Criminality and Regulation

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I commend my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) for securing this important debate and for his continued work standing up not just for the people of Silverdale but for those in wider north Staffordshire who are affected by Walleys Quarry. I want to highlight the great work of another neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) in starting to clear the Twyford House site in Etruria of 30,000 tonnes of commercial and illegal waste.

This is a serious issue. I could not agree more with my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) when he talks about fly-tipping. It is blighting Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, whether that be in Goldenhill and Sandyford, Burslem Park estate or the alleyways of Tunstall. The scumbags who continue to litter in our local area need to be brought to heel. We need to make sure that they are sent out in high-vis chain gangs, litter picking and cleaning up their community. It is simply unacceptable that those people who obey the law, do the right thing and love the local area that they live in should have to suffer because of a mindless minority of morons.

Sadly, the blight of the waste industry is continuing to spread. The latest case in north Staffordshire involves the landfill on Porthill Road in Longport. It is affecting the constituents of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke in particular, and locals are already having to deal with the disgraceful way in which Price and Kensington Teapot Works has been allowed to rot by its rogue landlord. In nearby Burslem, people recently saw a key part of mother town heritage, the Leopard pub, go up in flames, and now residents are having to live with the disgusting smells coming from the landfill on Porthill Road in Longport.

Staffordshire Waste Recycling Centre Ltd is digging up Stoke-on-Trent’s past at the landfill, seemingly digging for materials. It has never had permission to do that, yet the company has now applied for retrospective planning permission to work on the landfill—something that I and the residents of Longport, Middleport, Dale Hall, Burslem and the surrounding area are absolutely opposed to. I will shortly be making clear my objection to that application in a letter to Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

[Aaron Bell]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton) for their support on Walleys Quarry. I have received complaints about this landfill from my constituents in Newcastle-under-Lyme. I listened to what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) said in the Adjournment debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Gareth Bacon) last week, and I want him and his constituents to know that I stand with them.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I could not be more grateful to my hon. Friend. This is why we are a tour de force in north Staffordshire, walking around at every opportunity like some sort of north Staffordshire mafia, which I am proud to be a part of.

The company has also repeatedly breached its permit at the neighbouring site, where it does have permission to operate. Many incidents were reported at the site in 2021, including four in the run-up to Christmas. A site visit by the Environment Agency on 21 January 2022 found multiple breaches of permits, including the storage of too much hazardous waste on the site, as well as the storage of scrap metal, which the permit does not allow.

I am encouraged to have learned from the Environment Agency that it will carry out further inspections this week and has engaged with the company to get it to sort out its operation. The Environment Agency and Stoke-on-Trent City Council will also have a joint meeting on Thursday to discuss the problems at the site. I look forward to receiving an update early next week on the outcome of those investigations and the meeting.

When the people who run waste sites fail to keep them safe and manage them in a way that is inconsiderate to their neighbours, it has a huge impact on people’s physical and mental wellbeing, as well as the feel-good factor of a place that we proudly call home. We need to make sure that these companies can be properly controlled and brought to heel when they do wrong.

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

I thank colleagues for their co-operation in keeping to time. We turn to speeches from the Front-Benchers; the first two have five minutes each.