Sign before 10th April to safeguard the Pinkham Way nature conservation site

What’s this all about? There’s a complete iceberg of underwater aspects but just looking at some of the easy pickings:
North London (that’s us) generates 2.86m tonnes of waste pa (latest figures)
It has capacity of 4.42m tonnes to manage it.
That’s surplus capacity of 1.6m tonnes pa, or 35%.
Enough? North London is also net exporter of waste, so the available capacity should be even higher.
But apparently it’s not enough.
Equivalent capacity-gap maths recently saw an agreement to a large new incinerator at Edmonton which quickly had the waste authority identifying waste “opportunities” in a 50 mile radius (think eg Oxford and Reading) to fill it up.
Then there’s the £1m pa special budget line in the council’s accounts repaying the £60m outstanding loans which are a residue from an earlier Pinkham Way debacle. (That’s roughly this year’s cut in Enfield’s public health grant). It’s also on top of the approximately £40m in various associated costs and professional fees we’ve all met via the authorities cash flow (our Council Tax).
But earlier PWA efforts did help drive £900m of savings when the original “procurement “plans for Pinkham Way were dropped.
That’s what we do, because the history indicates this organisation needs to be held to account.
That’s why your signature, and even donation, in support of the current work is important.
Google Pinkham Way Alliance. Look at the photos. Add your name to the submission before it closes next week. It makes sense.

I should add this is a consultation relevant to the 7 boroughs / 2 million people of North London, so PWA encourage you to pass details on to relevant friends, family and networks.

This is a view of the woodland that north London councils want to earmark for industrial development - as a site for a waste processing plant. Photo is by Keith Attenborough and is one of a stunning series of wildlife photos - flora and fauna - on Flickr . Time to put a stop to this madness!

So lots of capacity headroom, a forecast of waste going ever upwards and yet consultants for the London Waste and Recycling Board produce a report to inform the London Plan which envisages a central scenario from a waste prevention strategy reducing total waste levels by 30% over the next 30 years, and 60% if we really go for it. So on one hand its lots of existing capacity and forecasts of ever more waste, on the other a sharp reduction in waste levels being expected from a more sensible approach to waste prevention. Would you go ahead and concrete over those photos of Pinkham Way against that background?

(BTW, this is the existing trend of our own waste – LACW being Local Authority Collected Waste.)

2,184 (two thousand one hundred and eighty four) residents chose to counter sign the representation put forward by the PWA yesterday to the Regulation 19 North London Waste Plan (NLWP). If even a minority choose to turn up at the public inquiry, currently expected in the autumn, it will make for a very full-house.

Tightly argued from many fronts across its 103 pages it is hard to see there being much of a case, if any at all, to include the Pinkham Way site in the NLWP. I’m sure a copy will be available on the PWA web site soon for those looking for useful bedtime reading.

Mind you, not everyone sees things this way, not least the sites planning authority – Haringey borough. Attached is a note providing comments from their web site after their Cabinet overturned the recommendation of their own Regulatory Committee and agreed to include the site in the NLWP.

Some headlines from what they state on their web:

“of some local nature conservation value” – The site was made a Grade 2 Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SINC) in 1979, upgraded to Grade 1 in 1988, and is seen by Natural England as being of Metropolitan Importance, a category classed in the London Plan as having “the highest priority for protection”.

“no suitable alternate options”: that would be the near 100 hectares of Industrial Land, identified and agreed by the 7 partner boroughs, all specifically being the category of land identified in the London Plan as being suitable for waste use - Industrial Land.

Of the 7 North London Boroughs making up the NLWP, “all of whom have contributed land” – true, provided you exclude Camden and Islington who didn't.

“We (that’s Haringey) must do our fair share”. The “fair shares” run from no contribution (0%) at all (Camden and Islington), through 2% of the total (Hackney), 7% Barnet to the highest contribution at 37% of the total from Haringey. So that’s a fair share of more than over a third of the NLWP total.

“There are no alternative sites”: ignoring existing sites and considering the fresh land only, then true if you exclude the near 100 hectares of agreed Industrial Land, otherwise your pants are on fire.

“Including Pinkham Way is the only option”: again, excluding the near 100h of fresh land; London and local policy on intensifying use of the many existing waste sites; ignoring the manipulation of sites expected to close over the next decade outside of both London and local policy requirements; accepting some heroic upward forecasts of future waste expectations (the established trend is just the opposite); ignoring the impact of the Circular Economy (that’s basically reusing much of our waste) prepared by the London Waste and Recycling Board for the GLA seeing a 30% reduction in waste levels; and some other key points then perhaps yes, if you put your head deep enough into the sand.

“nothing to indicate it has any function as an area for recreation”, or you could look to the detail of the Village Green application and conclude otherwise.

And on and on and on and . (And don't forget that the NLWP has chosen to plan for about 40% more waste than the GLA requires it to.)

Those who have delved into the murk find it frequently stinks, so many thanks to all those who added their signature in support of what has been a lot of effort over a very long time. We can't unwind the £100m of the wasted cash of ours unnecessarily sunk in to this site so far, but we can now hopefully stop it getting any worse.

For those with a lot of time on their hands, or an interest, the PWA submission to the Regulation 19 North London Waste Plan is now available to download from the PWA web site (http://www.pinkhamwayalliance.org/). In this process, the assumption is that the R19 NLWP is “sound”, ie should be approved without amendment. It is up to others, such as PWA, to prove why that is not the case. PWA would seem to have done a good job in that but it will be up to the independent inspector in the public hearing expected in the autumn to examine the evidence and make their decision. That means 2020 is likely to be a year of champagne or tears, certainly for the jumping spiders, various amphibians and other wildlife currently residing there or simply using it as a green corridor.