Agenda item

Report of the Portfolio Holder for Housing, Planning and Heritage

The Portfolio Holder for Planning, Housing and Heritage presented a report on the Council’s draft Joint Waste Local Plan. The following points were discussed:

(a)  a great deal of work has gone into the production of the draft Joint Waste Local Plan, developed with Nottinghamshire County Council. The period for the new Plan is until 2038, and it represents the third waste strategy document developed jointly with the County Council. A consultation was carried out on potential options two years ago, and the results of this have been used to shape the current Plan. The volumes of potential future waste have been forecast and the capacity for managing it have been reviewed through a Waste Needs Assessment, and this did not identify any significant gaps in capacity to be addressed;

(b)  the Plan does not set aside specific sites for development for the purposes of waste management, as it is important that the need to establish more areas for landfill is avoided. However, it does set out criteria for how planning applications for waste management activity should be assessed. The Plan establishes challenging recycling targets that are in keeping with the Council’s carbon neutrality objectives for 2028;

(c)  a Municipal Waste Strategy for Nottingham, to set out how the Council will manage the waste that it is responsible for collecting, is being developed alongside the Joint Waste Local Plan, and it is aimed to ensure as much synergy as possible between the two strategies;

(d)  the draft Plan will be taken out to consultation by both Councils for eight weeks from the start of February. It will then be reviewed and revised on the basis of the outcomes arising from the consultation, before being submitted to national Government for validation, before it can be adopted;

(e)  the Board welcomed the draft Plan and the coming consultation process. It considered that it is important that the city’s Municipal Waste Strategy is linked closely to the wider Joint Waste Local Plan, and that the Council sets its targets high to meet the obligations established within it. In the area of recycling in particular, a great deal of work still needs to be carried out to encourage more people to recycle, and to recycle correctly.

Resolved:

(1)  to approve the carrying out of a consultation process for the draft Nottinghamshire and Nottingham Waste Local Plan;

(2)  to delegate authority to the Director of Planning and Regeneration, in consultation with the Portfolio Holder for Planning, Housing and Heritage, to make any required minor changes to the draft Plan prior to the start of the consultation process.

·  Reasons for the decision

The Council is a ‘waste planning authority’ and has a statutory duty to maintain an up-to-date Waste Local Plan, which is prepared jointly with Nottinghamshire County Council. The current Joint Waste Core Strategy (2013) has become dated, so the two Councils commenced a review of the Joint Waste Local Plan in 2019. The results of this consultation have been taken into the draft Joint Waste Local Plan, which will move forward for consultation in accordance with the Town and County Planning (Local Planning) (England) Regulations 2012.

·  Other options considered

To do nothing: the Council has a statutory responsibility to prepare an up-to-date

Waste Local Plan, so this option is rejected.