For the latest news about the BALI campaign and issues directly relating to:
- BALI Events
- the new BALI Membership scheme
- the House of Commons Visit,
- the Link Road,
- the Bexhill Cemetery Site,
- Campaign News and other matters,
please see the new BALI News Blog
Campaign Latest: July 2010
BALI Announces new Membership Scheme
Register Now to become a Member of BALI!
We have decided to reorganize BALI as a broad-based membership association, open to all Bexhill residents. For a nominal subscription you will receive a quarterly newsletter and the right to vote on important matters at the AGM.
BALI's aim is simply to stop the landfill. We started our campaign in 2002 with a small group of residents. Through widespread public support, we have become a force with which to be reckoned.
To register for membership, please:
- email BALI info@nolandfillatbexhill.org.uk, stating your name, address, contact phone no. and email address, or if you would prefer,
- download and complete the final section of the registration form (pdf format), and send it to BALI, PO Box 194, Bexhill on Sea, East Sussex TN40 9BD.
We will contact you with full details of our membership scheme and a full application form.
Please indicate if you would also be willing to play a more active part in our campaign, for example, serving on committees, researching, organizing or assisting canvassing or fundraising events.
Thank you for your support.
BALI Visit to House of Commons 11th June 2010
BALI demonstrated at Westminster sending a very firm message that landfill is not for Bexhill!
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We gathered on Parliament Square to be photographed by both Meridian TV and others including some very interested passers by, and with the wonderful backdrop of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben.
BALI Chairman, Nick Hollington was interviewed by Meridian, and we were then joined by Greg Barker, our very supportive MP, who wasn't averse to holding a placard saying 'Don't dump on Bexhill'.
Please read the full report and campaign latest on the BALI Blog.
Bexhill Cemetery Will Expand Despite Threat of Landfill
On 18th March 2010, Rother District Council Planning Committee decided to grant a new planning application (RR/2010/1783R) to extend Bexhill Cemetery in St Mary’s Lane almost to the border of the Ashdown Brickworks.
Unless ESCC withdraws its renewed proposal to allocate Ashdown for waste landfill and site-owners Ibstock decline to proceed with their landfill planning application, mourners visiting their loved ones or attending their burial will be faced with all the horrors of a rotting dump within perhaps as little as 50 yards.
The approved application represents a renewal of the permission of change of use granted under a previous application (RR/2006/3294/3R) whereby RDC would compulsorily purchase a substantial (2.92 hectares) field of agricultural land to the west of the current cemetery. It is understood that proceedings in this respect are already underway and the purchase is hoped to be completed before next summer.
The renewed application, passed unanimously by the Committee, demonstrates the determination of the Council to proceed with its plan to extend the Cemetery despite the proposal for an Ashdown landfill. They are required to provide for the burial needs of the local population and the existing cemetery is almost at full capacity. The policy to extend the existing cemetery has long been designated in the Rother District Local Plan (Policy BX10).
When the previous application was submitted, Ibstock fiercely objected to it, and when passed, took their objections as far as a Judicial Review in the High Court. It argued that the cemetery expansion was unsuitable as the quarry had been earmarked as a landfill site by the Waste Local Plan and that it hoped to use the field in question for stockpiling clay in this event. Their barrister stated that cemetery uses would expect "tranquillity" and this would be disturbed by the ‘noise of heavy machinery’ from the brickworks/landfill site and the visual impact had also not been considered. After two attempts, however, their challenge was finally dismissed on 13.1. 09 with costs awarded to RDC. (See Bexhill Observer 23.01.09).
The present application can perhaps be seen as a further challenge to Ibstock, laying ‘facts on the ground’ to dissuade them from their landfill plans. RDC made its opposition clear to the inclusion of Ashdown as a landfill site in ESCC’s Preferred Strategy for Waste during the recent consultation. The necessary expansion confirms their and BALI’s view that a landfill at Ashdown would be simply too close to local residences and amenities such as the Cemetery, the new Bexhill High School, the Highwoods and the Highwoods Golf Club.
Councillors were asked yesterday to consider the “attendant expectation of a quiet and peaceful atmosphere” at the Cemetery. It is not at all clear how such an atmosphere would be possible if both brickmaking and landfilling were to take place there, and consequently an increased amount of (waste) traffic to the site, all within earshot of cemetery users.
Nick Hollington, Chairman of BALI, writes "There would likely also be the screeching of seagulls who gather over such sites and the smell of rotting rubbish. Burrowing rats and foxes are also attracted to waste and might also turn their attention to graves. The air would likely be polluted by dust and; given the steepness of the cemetery it is inconceivable that any screening could fully hide this monstrous carbuncle on the landscape.
"Bexhill residents deserve better than to be faced with such horrors at such sensitive often distressing times when they visit their departed loved ones and the loved ones deserve better than a ‘plot by a dump’. But it is for Ibstock to withdraw its pernicious landfill plans not for the Council to withdraw its legitimate and necessary plans for the extension of the cemetery! A landfill would in any case be too close to the existing cemetery. A landfill is simply not wanted in this location- a beautiful quiet cemetery is."
Ibstock, through its lawyers, again objected to the current application on the grounds of "incompatibility with its present and future (landfilling) operations", that it is inconsistent with RDC’s Local Plan and that it contained no details of landscaping, screening etc. They also again argued that it was "premature" in the light of the field’s “potential use for stockpiling clay”.
The High Court previously rejected all these arguments given that Ibstock had no ownership rights over the field, that there was no current planning permission for a landfill (therefore its planned "future operations" were purely speculative) and that the Council did not have to address at this stage issues such as landscaping and screening. (Inevitably there will need to be in due course a full planning application by RDC to address these issues and create a suitable “buffer zone” (hedging etc.) between the Cemetery and the Brickworks.)
Thus while, of course, it is open to Ibstock to appeal against the Planning Committee’s decision there must be some doubt about whether they will. It is rather hoped that they will rather reconsider their plans for a landfill in such a sensitive location.
Nick Hollington BALI 19.03.2010
Read the related article: Cemetery to expand to within yards of landfill site published in the Bexhill Observer, 1st April 2010.
Read more about Ashdown Brickworks Site: Jurassic Park?
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