Biffa plans to expand operations in Staffordshire
A public consultation is being held for residents of Cannock, Staffordshire as Biffa plans to expand its anaerobic digestion (AD) facility and build an energy from waste (EfW) plant in the area.
The plans, yet to be formally submitted, relate to the Poplars and neighbouring Kingswood sites in Cannock where Biffa already manages a large landfill site. In November last year, MRW reported that Staffordshire County Council granted Biffa planning permission to develop an AD plant on the same site.
Now Biffa wants to increase the capacity of this AD plant and following the public consultation and exhibition, taking place on May 21 and 22, intends to submit an application to Staffordshire County Council for an AD plant that can process up to 120 thousand tonnes of waste. The current permission exists for a facility which can process 80 thousand tonnes.
As well as this, Biffa will also submit plans for a large EfW incinerator on the neighbouring Kingswood site.
Biffa director of environment and external affairs David Savoury said: “Once the public consultation is over, we will see what sort of responses we get back. Based on those responses we will see if there is anything else we need to do to reflect local views and then we will submit the plans, via the normal planning process, to Staffordshire County Council.”
A Staffordshire County Council spokesman confirmed that as yet they had not received the plans from Biffa, but were aware of the company’s intentions.
Savoury told MRW that Biffa were already aware of the views of many local people on the plans and that they had received a “mixture of responses”.
As part of the proposal Biffa plans to alleviate people’s concerns about excess traffic which may occur as a result of the development. Savoury said: “We are offering up a traffic scheme which will take traffic away from a roundabout near the entrance to the landfill site and open another entrance near the EfW part of the proposal.”
This news of Biffa’s plans to increase the capacity of its AD plant, come just days after the new coalition Government announced that they plan to promote a “huge increase in energy from waste through anaerobic digestion”.
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