Cllr Steven Leigh, Leader of the Conservative Group, blasts the Labour-run Council’s handling of the proposed incinerator application at the Belmont site in Triangle, following apologies from the Cabinet who have been criticised by campaigners for failing to handle the application transparently.
In an email to the Council’s Senior Officers, and Labour Leadership, Cllr Leigh said: “The Council’s performance on this issue, in my opinion, has been cynical, unhelpful, regrettable and extremely disappointing.”
Cllr Leigh also shares “concerns that the Council has been party to considerable discussion and changes to the application submissions since the Cabinet decision in February 2021, that have not been made public and on which the public are going to be given a very limited amount of time to comment.”
“The Council has clearly made a decision to wash its hands of any pretence of defending the appeal on this occasion, but there is nothing in the public domain that documents the reason for this or the decision process.”
“This is no time for the Council to again fall back on pedant and procedural arguments. The proper thing for the Council to do is ensure that any objectors have time to gather further evidence, commission any necessary technical investigations and reports, and assemble appropriate legal arguments.”
“I call upon the Leader of the Council (or his Deputy), and the Council’s Chief Executive, and Solicitor, to make further apologies to all Objectors, and confirm that a period of 90 days (or more) is at least allowed as ‘the correct amount of time’.”
As reported in the Halifax Courier, Malcolm Powell, a campaigner against the incinerator, asked the Labour Cabinet why it “had not kept the public informed, not told the public about the appeal, not followed statutory notification process, submitted a statement of case supporting the appeal without consultation, why it had ignored an air consultancy report and what it was going to do to “urgently put this right”.
Cllr Leigh said “I am afraid that ‘sorry’ is simply not good enough. Despite Labour claiming to be opposed to the application, it has kept the public in the dark and limited campaigners’ ability to object. The Conservative Group will continue to fervently oppose this application alongside residents to the bitter end. It is about time that the Labour Party stops falsely claiming on its election literature that it had done everything it can to stop this application, and that its “hands are tied” – as theatrically stated by the Labour Cabinet Member for Climate Change, last year. It’s about time that the Labour Cabinet put this right”.
