HC Deb 28 November 1996 vol 286 cc564-70

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Knapman.]

10 pm

Mr. David Faber (Westbury)

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of Fairfield Piggeries in Bradford-on-Avon on behalf of hundreds, even thousands, of my constituents, who have for years had to put up with appalling smells and environmental harm. I regret the need for this debate, which comes at the end of several years of consideration by West Wiltshire district council and the Department of the Environment. I hope that it will mark the culmination of my correspondence with the Secretary of State and the communication between the council and the Department.

It may be helpful if I explain some of the background. Fairfield Piggeries has been running under its current ownership for some 50 years, and has 5,000 pigs. Several people have suggested that people who live in the countryside near farms should learn to live with agricultural smells, but the smells concerned are not those of the pigs but of the waste rendering process, about which we have heard much during the bovine spongiform encephalopathy scare.

The smell is noxious; it is industrial and chemical rather than agricultural. There are two rendering cookers on the site for the waste that is brought to it. One heats up waste food—vats of butter, bread, pizza, cakes; anything that can be got rid of locally. The second, more controversially, renders dead poultry. The carcases of turkeys and chickens are left on the site in skips. The resulting liquid feed is pumped through pipes to 5,000 pigs. The fumes should, technically, be removed by a biological filter bed.

In recent years, the smell from the plant has broken out way beyond the boundaries of the farm. The community of Bradford Leigh suffers an almost permanent nuisance, especially in summer when it becomes stifling. In summer, people driving past have to wind up their windows, children cannot play in gardens, and local residents cannot open their windows at night. The main reason for this debate is the delay in my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's redetermining the appeal of the owners of the piggeries.

In October 1992—more than four years ago—the piggery owners applied to West Wiltshire district council for authorisation to carry out the rendering process, as required under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The council refused authorisation and, in March 1994, the owners filed an appeal against the council. On 23 and 24 August 1994, a section 15 public appeal hearing was held in Bradford-on-Avon and the Secretary of State's inspector, Mr. Jarvis, heard evidence from the main parties, local residents and organisations. Naturally, he also visited the site. He concluded that the company was unlikely to be able to carry on the rendering process so as to comply effectively with the Environmental Protection Act 1990. He also concluded that the crucial test of the management practices was being failed because the emissions should not have caused an offensive smell outside the process boundary. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's own inspector recommended that the appeal be rejected.

West Wiltshire district council then had to wait 12 months for my right hon. Friend's decision, which came on 2 August 1995. He overruled his own inspector. He upheld the appeal by the company and directed West Wiltshire district council to issue authorisation. There was concern at the time that the condition relating to offensive smells was left out of the authorisation, even though it had been agreed by both parties at the appeal hearing.

In September 1995, the council went ahead to judicial review. It was heard by Mr. Justice Spence on 6 March 1996. At the hearing, my right hon. Friend's decision was considered in great detail. The judge decided that the Department's reasoning was poor, that the inspector's recommendations had not been acted on and that no recognition had been made of the crucial issue of the smell outside the site boundary. The judge found in the council's favour and referred the matter back to the Department of the Environment for redetermination.

West Wiltshire district council received notification of the redetermination in a letter from the Department of 12 March this year and complied with the deadline for comments of 3 April. A second round of representations was requested in a letter of 1 May, and again it replied within the deadline set, which was 20 May. Since then, in spite of telephone calls from the council to officials, and letters from me to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, no timetable has been set for the decision to be made.

I wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on 14 March. On 2 April I received a reply from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment. He set out the process for redetermination and acknowledged my representations, but the letter contained no timetable for the decision. In a telephone call to the Department, the council was informed that the decision would take weeks rather than months to achieve. We are now at the end of November, and still no decision has been made.

On 11 July, I wrote again to my right hon. Friend, saying that I felt that the council had been tolerant in its use of language, given the extreme delay in the decision. I also pointed out that we were then well into the summer months, by which time the smells were noxious and extremely bad for local residents.

On 5 August, I received a reply from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford). He said that the appeal was being considered as quickly as possible given the available resources, as we are very conscious of the nuisance caused by animal rendering plant in hot weather. I hope that a revised decision will issue in the very near future. I wrote again to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on 19 September at some length, following a further visit to the site the previous day. At that stage, I described the delay as intolerable and suggested that I might resort to this Adjournment debate.

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary replied on 7 October, this time with a new excuse. He said: officials in my Department are giving this work the highest possible priority … they, remain acutely conscious of the nuisance animal rendering plant can cause, and thus the urgency of reaching a new decision … A number of the officials responsible for drafting it have also been occupied on urgent and unavoidable BSE-related work, which was not foreseen in March when the court made its decision. As a result, the redetermination has taken rather longer than we expected. although a decision is now in sight. As I understand it, my right hon. Friend has two options. He can accept his inspector's report and the judge's decision and refer the matter back to West Wiltshire district council for it to give authorisation or not, or he can uphold the appeal again and reach the decision by different means, as the judge criticised the way in which the decision had been reached rather than the end product. West Wiltshire district council would then have to decide whether to go back to court.

What we are debating tonight, and the issue that I wish to raise with my hon. Friend the Minister this evening, is the on-going delay, which is simply unacceptable for everyone involved. I stressed earlier that the issue was not an agricultural smell but the smell of an industrial process.

The smell is chemical, not agricultural. The debate is not designed to criticise those who own and work at Fairfield Piggeries. The delay is every bit as bad for them as it is for everybody else—they are unable to plan; they have no idea of whether they will be closed down in the near future; and they do not know what level of investment will be required of them over the coming months. My view, which I have made clear to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and to local people, is that it is impossible for them to carry on the rendering process as they are and that the damage they are doing to local people's environment is simply unacceptable.

It is possible that a programme of investment such as that suggested by the district council could alleviate the problem. I understand that improvements could be made in two areas: first, a lobby building on the end of the main building where the waste enters would act as an airlock; and, secondly, improvements could be made to the abatement plant by installing one or more extra filter beds to stop the smells resulting from the rendering process.

As I said, the debate is about the inordinate length of time that my hon. Friend's Department is taking to come to a decision. Between June and September 1994, the local district council received 255 complaints from local people; in the same period for 1995, 251 complaints were received; and in the same period this year—the hottest summer months—the figure rose to 392 complaints. Local residents are justifiably angry. People who live near the piggeries cannot open their windows; their children cannot go out and play during the summer; the value of their houses has been affected; and, naturally, many have justifiable concerns about the effects on public health.

Apart from the anger expressed locally against those who own and run the piggeries, much anger is now directed at my hon. Friend's Department because of the length of time that it has taken to reach a decision. The delay has had a seriously detrimental effect on the local environment and on the company's ability to plan for the future. For the district council, it has been a frustrating process and I pay tribute to the way in which the council has dealt with the problem.

As a district council, it has its own set of specifications for the level of service it offers—it provides detailed response times and complaints procedures for local council tax payers. If the council falls out of line, the Audit Commission and the local government ombudsman are always available to investigate any mistakes. No such sanction is available to local people in respect of the Department of the Environment. The district council's hands are tied. Under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, it is unable to intervene as long as the issue is with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for redetermination.

I believe that the Department's delay in reaching a decision—it is now nine months since the judicial review, after which the judge sent the case back to my right hon. Friend for redetermination—is wholly unacceptable. The problem has been going on for years, which is too long for everyone involved. It is almost nine months since the court hearing and several years since the first appeal was made, yet no end is in sight.

Even if my hon. Friend is unable to announce a decision tonight on the Floor of the House, I urge him to come up with some idea of when a date will be given for the appeal process to end. That way, some stability can be given to the owners of the plant, to local people and to the district council, so that they can plan ahead.

10.12 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. James Clappison)

Hon. Members will have gathered that this is a matter of considerable interest to the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Mr. Faber), who have complained of the smell from Fairfield Piggeries. It is self-evident, from the history that my hon. Friend outlined, that he has followed developments for some time with close interest and that he has been assiduous in representing his constituents' interests.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on the subject of Fairfield Piggeries. He clearly described what the piggeries consist of—they are a combined animal and vegetable rendering process. Such processes have the potential to cause severe local odour nuisance, and my hon. Friend described what happened in this case. It is clear that my hon. Friend, West Wiltshire district council and the Government are of one mind—that this odour problem must be sorted out. However, we have so far disagreed on the best means to bring that about.

Like all animal rendering processes, that at Fairfield Piggeries is subject to local air pollution control, which is a scheme for the prior approval of polluting processes, brought in by the Environmental Protection Act 1990, as my hon. Friend rightly said. Under the scheme, renderers are required to obtain an authorisation from their local authority to continue operating. In common with all process operators, renderers have a statutory right of appeal to the Secretary of State against, inter alia, any refusal by a local authority to issue an authorisation, and any of the conditions that have been included in any authorisation that is issued. In this case, West Wiltshire district council is the authorising body.

I shall deal first of all with my hon. Friend's concerns about the time that it is taking to redetermine this case, before moving on to explain the considerations that cases such as this raise and how the Secretary of State approaches them.

The operators of Fairfield Piggeries applied for an authorisation for their rendering processes in late 1992; they were refused by West Wiltshire district council in September 1993; they appealed against the council's refusal to the Secretary of State in March 1994 and, following a public hearing in August 1994, the Secretary of State directed the council to issue an authorisation in August 1995.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Secretary of State's decision was that stringent conditions should be included in the authorisation that he directed the council to issue, to bring about a rapid improvement in the long-standing odour problems at the site, the council decided to seek judicial review of that decision. In March this year, the High Court determined that the Secretary of State had failed to give adequate reasons for his decision, which was then quashed. The Secretary of State immediately embarked on a redetermination of the case, and the current position is that we expect a decision shortly. I shall say a little more about that in due course.

Understandably, my hon. Friend, West Wiltshire district council and the local people are concerned to see the case redetermined as rapidly as possible. Until there is a new decision, the council is effectively unable to take steps under the local air pollution control regime to have the process upgraded or shut down.

All that I can say is that my Department is extremely conscious of the urgency of the case and that we are doing our very best to reach a new decision as rapidly as possible.

To cast light on the matter, it may help if I explain to my hon. Friend that, in March, the High Court did not attack the Secretary of State for having upheld the appeal. It quashed the Secretary of State's decision because the letter did not adequately set out the reasons why he had upheld the appeal. I hope that my hon. Friend and West Wiltshire council are aware that the redetermined decision may be to uphold the appeal as before, and that it is not a matter of the High Court having told the Secretary of State that he must refuse the appeal. The Secretary of State will reach, as quickly as possible, whatever decision is right in the light of the inspector's report and all the other evidence before him.

I clearly cannot comment about the specifics of this particular case, because it is still before the Secretary of State for redetermination. However, I can make some observations, which I think will be helpful, about the policy considerations on which the case hinges, which I hope that those with an interest in the matter will find useful.

The first and most important policy consideration is that the Government are determined that animal renderers must improve their odour control, using the best available techniques not entailing excessive cost. A guidance note has been issued detailing the extensive odour control measures that the Secretary of State would expect existing or new processes to take, the aim being that there should be no smell at the process boundary.

Although the expectation is that an existing process that gives rise to smell problems would be authorised and required to upgrade along the lines set out in the process guidance note, it is, of course, possible for regulatory authorities to refuse to issue an authorisation at all. The Government would expect a refusal to be very much a last resort, and to be backed up by cogent evidence that the process operator is not able to mend his ways in the manner envisaged by the legislation.

Mr. Faber

Can my hon. Friend confirm that part II of the Environmental Protection Act 1990—which deals with waste management licensing—enshrines the principle of the owner of the property or the owner of a process being a "fit and proper person", whereas part I of the Act, which deals with the authorisation of the processes that we are discussing, makes no such mention of the qualification of being a fit and proper person?

Mr. Clappison

I think that my hon. Friend is right about that. Part II, to which he referred, deals with waste management, and being a fit and proper person has an important role to play in that. Part I deals with the authorisations for air pollution control that we are talking about in this instance. The considerations in that regard are somewhat different, and directed toward avoiding the problems outlined by my hon. Friend. They are concerned particularly with the ability of the person controlling the operation to bring the problems to an end. I shall deal with that problem in a moment.

As I said, the Government expect refusals to be very much a last resort, and to be backed up by cogent evidence that the process operator is not able to mend his ways in the manner envisaged by legislation. Refusal is not at all common, but it is, of course, what happened in the case of Fairfield Piggeries.

The Environmental Protection Act—in a way, this deals with the point that my hon. Friend has just raised—envisages the possibility of refusal of an application for authorisation. Section 6 states: An application shall not be granted unless the enforcing authority considers that the applicant will be able to carry on the process so as to comply with the conditions which would he included in the authorisation. In the Secretary of State's view, an enforcing authority should first ask itself, "What conditions would be included if this process were to be authorised?" and then, "Is the applicant able to comply with them?" focusing on the applicant's ability to comply.

When we do encounter refusals to grant authorisation, section 6(4) is usually cited by the enforcing authority as the reason, as was the case with West Wiltshire when it declined to authorise the Fairfield Piggeries process. All too often, however, the enforcing authority will tell the person concerned, effectively, "You have not complied with conditions in the past; therefore, we do not consider that you are able to comply with the conditions that we would include in any authorisation."

I am afraid that that is not the right way forward. The enforcing authority has to consider the applicant's ability to comply, not his track record. The track record is, of course, a useful indication, but it is usually far from being sufficient evidence in itself to justify taking away someone's livelihood—which is usually what is at stake in such cases. It is simply not good enough for an enforcing authority to say, "This applicant has operated with too many smell problems in the past; therefore he is not capable of sorting them out in the future."

It is the Secretary of State's practice—although not that of such enforcing authorities—to apply his mind to the test set by the legislation, that is, the applicant's ability to comply with the conditions that would be included in any authorisation. Often there is little or no evidence directly bearing on that question. Attitude and past performance may be pretty clear, but ability or otherwise is difficult to establish. In such circumstances, the Secretary of State's policy is to give the applicant the benefit of the doubt. It would not be defensible to take someone's livelihood from him because of unsubstantiated doubts about his ability to comply with conditions.

My hon. Friend may say that this is a little hard on those who must put up with the effects of an applicant's being given the benefit of the doubt in that way. As I said, he has been assiduous in the matter. But the beauty of the 1990 Act system is that, once an authorisation has been issued, people no longer have to put up with unacceptable behaviour. That may be of some assistance to my hon. Friend's constituents. Failure to comply with conditions is a criminal offence, carrying swingeing penalties on conviction, while continued unacceptable behaviour on the part of a polluter can lead to revocation of his authorisation by the enforcing authority. It is possible that one or more of the operators given the benefit of the doubt as to "ability" in that way will, having been authorised, subsequently turn out quite rapidly not to have been worthy of authorisation—but that is not in itself a reason not to give such operators a chance to clean up their act.

I have taken careful note of my hon. Friend's wish for a decision on the appeal to be issued as a matter of urgency—

Mr. Faber

I entirely understand what my hon. Friend is saying, and agree wholeheartedly that the benefit of the doubt should be with the person who is carrying out the operation. I have no desire for someone's livelihood—or the livelihood of those who work for that person—to be taken away unnecessarily. I hope that my hon. Friend appreciates that that has not been the tone of my speech or of the debate. I have merely sought to point out that the process of appeal, judicial review and redetermination has now been going on for several years, and that that is unacceptable to those who run the plant, to the local people who are suffering the smell and to West Wiltshire district council.

I endorse much of what my hon. Friend has said, but what we want locally is a decision one way or the other, so that the district council knows where it stands. It needs to know whether it must encourage the owners to make the required investment to bring their plant up to scratch, so that the smells can be eliminated. All we want is a date or a time in the near future when the redetermination will be complete, so that everyone knows where they stand.

Mr. Clappison

My hon. Friend has been reasonable, not just this evening, but in all his communications on the matter. I understand his concerns.

I can assure my hon. Friend on two points. First, I can assure him on the general policy on conditions, and the severe consequences that will follow from a breach of conditions. Secondly, I have listened carefully to the points that he made. Although I cannot give him a date here and now, I can assure him that I shall closely consider the timing, bearing in mind the reasonable points that he made about the importance of time. I shall examine how the matter is being handled. I shall do my best to ensure that a decision is made as soon as possible. I shall take a close interest in the matter, to reflect the close interest that he has taken throughout.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes past Ten o'clock.