HUGELY contentious plans for a new low carbon facility on an existing waste services site in Christchurch have been approved by councillors.

More than 700 residents, community groups and town and parish councils objected to Eco Sustainable Solutions proposal for an energy recovery facility (ERF) on their green belt site in Chapel Lane.

Members of BCP Council’s planning committee supported a recommendation to grant the application, despite local authority officer’s acknowledging that the development was “considered to constitute inappropriate development in the green belt”.

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Committee chair Cllr David Kelsey put forward the motion to approve the plan, which was carried nine votes to four.

“I think this application is a statement that we want to try to clean up the area and this company in particular wants to do a good job,” said Cllr Kelsey.

He added: “We are talking about the here and now. We can’t keep just planning ahead. We have to deal with the situation we are in right now.”

During the meeting, several objectors gave representations to the committee.

David Barnes said: “You will have received an extraordinary number of objections, highlighting the extensive public health, climate and wildlife consequence which would flow from the approval of this application.

“The sad reality is that no amount of finessing of this application will address its fundamental flaws in these areas and many more.”

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Jenny Ansell, representing East Dorset Friends of the Earth, said the application was not consistent with national policies.

The committee was also told that Autism Unlimited, formerly Autism Wessex, was concerned that the applicant and BCP Council had failed to take consider the potential impact on students at Portfield School – an on-site education facility for children with autism.

The plans include the ERF, new administration building with offices, welfare facilities and a visitor centre as well as plans to re-position the green waste composting to east of the site.

There will be be new access to Chapel Lane to serve the administration and welfare building and car park.

Justin Dampney, of Eco Sustainable Solutions, said the proposals would increase the business’s

existing economic, social and environmental benefits.

Mr Dampney said there was a “clear need” for a solution to the 35 per cent of waste which is not recycled locally.

“There is no facility like the one we are proposing locally,” said Mr Dampney.

“Currently this local leftover waste is loaded onto heavy goods vehicles, clocking up hundreds of thousands of avoidable additional waste miles, sending it to London, Bristol, or worse still, buried in landfill sites out of county.”

Mr Dampney said it had taken seven years to get the project to its current stage and both BCP Council and Dorset Council had identified a need for a facility like the one being proposed.

Commons ward councillor Vanessa Ricketts said “it is clear that the supposed benefits do not equal the disbenefits”, meaning the application should be refused.

Planning committee member Cllr Ann Stribley said: “I don’t like it, I wish we didn’t have to deal with this but we live in a society, we make waste, we have to deal with it.”

She added: “I understand the objections and the concerns but I can’t see a planning reason for refusal.”

Cllr Lesley Dedman, who voted against the application, said: “I feel the impact of this project on the surrounding area is very high.”

Deputy chair of the committee Cllr Johnson, who seconded the move to grant the proposal, said: “We don’t particularly want these sites in the Green Belt but given that this one is there, has been there for a great deal of time, I think it is far more preferable for that site to be slightly intensified and made more efficient than it would be to have to create an entirely new site somewhere else.”

Eco Sustainable Solutions needs to obtain a permit from the Environment Agency for the facility, which is a separate process to the land use planning application approved by the committee.

The planning application itself is subject to Secretary of State approval.