A former council chief has urged current leaders to stay strong in the face of renewed pressure from the company bidding to erect an incinerator in the heart of Perth.
Grundon Waste Management declared its intention late last month to submit a fresh planning application for a site on the town’s Shore Road.
While the details have yet to be confirmed, Grundon is in the process of “assessing alternative technologies and plant designs” for the site. And the firm is likely to return to Perth and Kinross Council’s planning chiefs with new proposals by May.
Keen to ensure it does not succeed in “bludgeoning” its way through local opposition is former council chief executive James Cormie, who has previously criticised the local authority for not “grasping the nettle” and revoking outline planning permission.
He has now written to every elected member on Perth and Kinross Council calling on them not to waver in their opposition to plans for Shore Road and including a copy of a newspaper article on the “lack of fairness” in the planning system.
The article quotes the celebrated playwright, screenwriter and author Alan Bennett, who in his diary in the London Review of Books, writes, “The planning process is and always has been weighted against objectors, who, even if they succeed in postponing a development, have to must their forces afresh when the developer and architect come up with a slightly modified scheme and so on until the developer wins by a process of attrition.”
Mr Cormie said that “as the spectre of a refuse incinerator at Shore Road was once again rearing its ugly head,” it was vital that the local authority considers the experience of other communities and of other developments.
“Time after time I have seen developers submit repeated applications for development each just some modification of the original until the council feel bludgeoned into giving permission,” Mr Cormie said. “It is vital to the future of the city of Perth that this does not happen here.”
Perth and Kinross Council declined to comment on Mr Cormie’s plea.
Photo by Flickr user eastleighbusman.