Veolia 2010 Waste Measurement
From The Round Hill Reporter September 2010
Neighbours of the Hollingdean depot face official disarray
Residents downwind of the Hollingdean waste processing plant have endured a smelly summer. Locals are still reporting problems to the Environment Agency but news in July that the City Council’s Environmental Health office was closing its case file on the plant was met with anger in the community.
In past months, Council officials have repeatedly made it clear that complaints should be referred directly to the Environment Agency. Now that locals have done exactly that, City officers seem to be suggesting that the drop in calls locally means that there is no ongoing concern about the facility. This announcement appears cynical and disingenuous and highlights the lack of official coordination on the issue. The Environment Agency continue to receive several calls a week relating to odour, noise and particulate problems of which officers in Brighton and Hove seem to be unaware.
There is also frustration from neighbours of the facility that they are required to perform their own monitoring of activity at the depot. After months of reporting problems to various bodies, residents have received no indication of impending action on the issues with which they are faced. The City Council appears to have no independent programme of assessment. Nor is there any appetite to hold the plant’s management to the conditions on which planning permission has been granted.
In the absence of planning enforcement, official requirements seem to be routinely flouted at the facility. The most visible evidence of this is the practice of leaving the large entry doors open at the Materials Recovery Facility allowing noise and dust to escape into the environment.
Councillors Ian Davey and Pete West have been supportive of residents, witnessing many of the problems for themselves in the gardens neighbouring the plant. Conditions in proximity to the plant were also cited as one of the reasons for Residents downwind of the Hollingdean waste processing plant have endured a smelly summer. Locals are still reporting problems to the Environment Agency but news in July that the City Council’s Environmental Health office was closing its case file on the plant was met with anger in the community.
In past months, Council officials have repeatedly made it clear that complaints should be referred directly to the Environment Agency. Now that locals have done exactly that, City officers seem to be suggesting that the drop in calls locally means that there is no ongoing concern about the facility. This announcement appears cynical and disingenuous and highlights the lack of official coordination on the issue. The Environment Agency continue to receive several calls a week relating to odour, noise and particulate problems of which officers in Brighton and Hove seem to be unaware.
There is also frustration from neighbours of the facility that they are required to perform their own monitoring of activity at the depot. After months of reporting problems to various bodies, residents have received no indication of impending action on the issues with which they are faced. The City Council appears to have no independent programme of assessment. Nor is there any appetite to hold the plant’s management to the conditions on which planning permission has been granted.
In the absence of planning enforcement, official requirements seem to be routinely flouted at the facility. The most visible evidence of this is the practice of leaving the large entry doors open at the Materials Recovery Facility allowing noise and dust to escape into the environment.
Councillors Ian Davey and Pete West have been supportive of residents, witnessing many of the problems for themselves in the gardens neighbouring the plant. Conditions in proximity to the plant were also cited as one of the reasons for refusal for the most recent planning application for the land between Princes Road and the railway embankment. This is the first time the issue has been officially recognised in the planning process and highlights the worsening problems for residents on this side of the hill.
One happier product of the problems at Hollingdean is the news from residents in Edinburgh who successfully resisted plans to build a similar facility in the Portobello region of the city. Locals cited the experiences of Brighton inhabitants in their campaign against the establishment of a waste processing plant so close to residential accommodation. They won their argument and the local authority are rethinking the location of the facility.
This page was last updated by Ted on 15-Apr-2026