Food Waste Collections
Residents' concerns
Related articles:
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Additional Minutes from RHS Committee Meeting with Cllr Tim Rowkins to discuss residents' concerns about new Food Waste and expanded Recycling services. Tim is BHCC's Cabinet Member for Net Zero & Environmental Services.
Detailed questions on new food waste collection service asked by Brighton Pavilion's MP Siân Berry on behalf of constituents and answered by Satti Sidhu | Acting Head of Strategy and Service Improvement | Environmental Services, Hollingdean Depot.
Hangleton Bottom retained as an alternative waste management site.
Introduction
Brighton and Hove City Council plans to start dedicated food waste collections later this year to comply with the law under The Environment Act of 2021. Residents living in a kerbside area will receive kitchen and outdoor caddies, allowing them to separate their food waste. The collected food waste will first be taken to Hollingdean's Waste Transfer Station for tipping into sealed containers before being transported for onward processing at the In-Vessel Composting facility near Uckfield.
2. Responses sent to local politicians
3. Is there an alternative site locally?
4. Should there be a planning application?
1. The Problem
Dedicated food waste collections are long overdue. However, It is a lost opportunity that, when the new service starts, the collected food waste will be taken first to Hollingdean’s Waste Transfer Station.
Separate food waste collection was identified by The Environment Agency over 10 years ago as the only possible way to solve the ongoing odour management problem which is most evident during spring and summer. The EA added then that this was not a goal which could be achieved overnight without bringing the city’s refuse collection services to a standstill.
Residents experiencing odour nuisances from the Waste Transfer Station, who have had to keep windows shut during hot sunny weather and/or can be embarrassed to host visitors in their gardens, include those [to the south] in Princes Road, Mayo Road and parts of Crescent Road, and those [to the north] in Upper Hollingdean Road including the two tower blocks (Dudeney Lodge and Nettleton Court) and parts of Davey Drive. The odour nuisance also depends on wind direction and can spread to parts of Ditchling Road to the west, including the playground of the Downs Infants School.
In a letter to affected residents outlining the results of his 2013-14 investigation into odour nuisance, Chris Parkin from the government's Environment Agency said that the design of The Waste Transfer Station did not make it suitable for containing odorous waste:
With the large amount of tipping that weekly collections of the city’s domestic food waste will generate, even though doors will be closed, there will still be opportunity for the odour to escape through the vents. Smoke billowed out through these very gaps during the major fire at the WTS on 25th & 26th August 2019.
Councillor Rowkins, Cabinet Member for Net Zero & Environmental Services, claims that a similar practice of tipping food waste into sealed containers is already working successfully at the Newhaven Energy Recovery Facility. However, the latter is not located in such proximity to residential properties and schools and the Newhaven site offered more space to allow a suitably constructed building.
Hollingdean’s Waste Transfer Station is not the state-of-the-art building that residents were promised prior to its approval. I took an audio recording of the meeting on 23rd June 2005 at the Downs Infants School to allow experts representing Onyx (now Veolia) to speak about the anticipated impacts of their scheme for a Waste Transfer Station and Materials Recovery Facility at Hollingdean Depot Brighton. Referring to the proposed Waste Transfer Station, Roger Barrowcliffe from ERM assured us that
A complete written transcript of this meeting is posted at https://roundhill.org.uk/main?sec=planning&p=Veolia_2005-06-23_Public_Meeting.
We were not given a state-of-the-art facility. The Brighton Society aptly described Veolia’s installations as “basic metal sheds, the cheapest form of building”.
Hollingdean's Waste Transfer Station has never been fit for the purpose of containing odorous waste. Active carbon filtration was abandoned as unlikely to be effective because the building was too big and too porous. The use of a UV lamp/ozone system for breaking down odour molecules (see New technology to eliminate waste stations' stink - The Argus, Thursday January 3, 2013 ) was never implemented. I learnt from Bunmi Aboaba of the Environment Agency that the system was considered unsafe in a place where there are people around.
2. Responses from local politicians
Our ward Councillors and Member of Parliament have now received responses about where the food waste will go directly after it has been collected.
Our MP received the following preliminary response from Satti Sidhu Acting Head of Strategy and Service Improvement | Environmental Services, Hollingdean Depot. The claim that there is a lack of suitable alternative sites locally needs to be clarified. See section 3.
PRELIMINARY RESPONSE
RESPONSES TO MORE DETAILED QUESTIONS
- In answer to more detailed questions, our MP received a fuller response from Satti Sidhu Acting Head of Strategy and Service Improvement | Environmental Services, Hollingdean Depot. See Siân Berry's questions and Satti Sidhu's answers.
- Round Hill's ward councillor Pete West tabled two written questions regarding the WTS and food waste which were submitted to Council on 19 December 2024 and answered by Councillor Rowkins, Cabinet Member for Net Zero & Environmental Services. Click HERE to read Cllr West's questions and Cllr Rowkins' answers.
SHORTFALL IN BURDENS MONEY FOR SEPARATE FOOD WASTE COLLECTION
Money has been given by the government to help Councils to comply with the 2021 Environment Act compelling them to offer weekly food waste collections by 2026.
However, our MP (Siân Berry) has disclosed that her predecessor (Caroline Lucas) was previously informed by senior council officers at BHCC that the new burdens money awarded to the council was around £1 million short of what it felt was needed and she was told in March 2024 that they intended "to request a review of the amount". BHCC's concerns about a potential shortfall were something echoed by other local authorities, and Caroline raised the matter with Government Ministers.
Siân Berry welcomes food waste collections. In addressing the Local Authority, she adds that "whilst it's important for the council to meet its new statutory duty to collect food waste, ensuring that the service we have is as effective as possible is also important, so if the new burdens money is not sufficient for this to happen, it's something that I would be very happy to raise further."
An effective service will cost. Too much cost-cutting accounts for the losses of amenity already experienced by residents living near to the Hollingdean Waste Transfer Station.
3. Is there an alternative site locally?
In his preliminary response to our MP's questions, Satti Sidhu states that
However, he makes no mention of Hangleton Bottom.
At The Round Hill Society's meeting on 4th February 2025 where food waste collections were discussed, Councillor Rowkins, Cabinet Member for Net Zero & Environmental Services, promised to find out if Hangleton Bottom: Map 8.1 acres is still allocated in the Waste Local Plan to be retained for Waste Management and Materials Recovery facilities, as a public inquiry inspector recommended in 2003. If so, the necessity to continue taking food waste first to Hollingdean's Waste Transfer Station can be challenged.
See Public Inquiry Waste Local Plan 2003 where the inspector's recommendations on sites allocated to Waste Management include the retention of Hangleton Bottom.
Page 38 of East Sussex, South Downs and Brighton & Hove Waste and Minerals Sites Plan - Adopted February 2017
provides a waste site profile for Hangleton Bottom, Hangleton Link Road, North Portslade. This confirms that the site is still allocated for waste management.
BHESCo's PROPOSAL: HANGLETON BOTTOM DEEMED TOO SMALL FOR AN AEROBIC DIGESTER
In January 2017, it was reported [see The Argus 24/01/2017] that BHESCo, a not for profit Co-operative with a mission to eradicate fuel poverty by processing locally produced food waste to biomethane, was hoping to build a £12 million food waste generator at Hangleton Bottom in Hove. No planning application followed the report in The Argus on BHESCo's plans for an Anaerobic Digester. It was deemed that Hangleton Bottom (see Map 8.1 acres) did not to have sufficient amount of land for the anaerobic digestion (AD) plant that BHESCo envisioned, as well as being too close to homes on Thornbush Crescent, a residential community, to be a suitable site for this plant.
HANGLETON BOTTOM MIGHT BE SUITABLE AS A FOOD WASTE TRANSFER STATION
However, Kayla Ente MBE, founder and Chief Executive of BHESCo has informed Dominic Furlong (who contacted her on behalf of The Round Hill Society) that
BHESCo's HOPE FOR ANOTHER SITE FOR AN AEROBIC DIGESTER
Use of an anaerobic digester would capitalise fully on the value of food waste, which inherently has a high calorific value. While aerobic digestion produces compost to enrich soil, it does not generate energy. Anaerobic digestion, however, takes things a step further by producing renewable energy in the form of biogas (in addition to the soil-enriching digestate). The biogas can be then converted into electricity, heat, or fuel.
THE NEED FOR MORE ANAEROBIC DIGESTERS LOCALLY
Satti Sidhu Acting Head of Strategy and Service Improvement | Environmental Services, Hollingdean Depot states
There is surely a need for more Anaerobic Digesters, but incentives to build them need to be given by Local Authorities responsible for food waste collections. The requirement under the Environment Act of 2021 that all councils must offer separate food waste collections by 2026 may be helpful, especially in cases where existing contracts do not bind councils to older and less efficient waste management technologies.
Kayla Ente agrees with the Roundhill community that
4. Should there be a planning application?
Satti Sidhu, Acting Head of Strategy and Service Improvement | Environmental Services, Hollingdean Depot, states:
While separate food waste collections are to be welcomed, the scale of the upheaval is yet unknown with several extra large vehicles using Hollingdean Depot, more pressure on its Waste Transfer Station and constant tipping albeit into sealed containers within a building where odour escapes through the vents designed to let the air in even when the doors are closed.
I am equally concerned that extra vehicle activity and constant tipping may involve additional noise. I would like to see a meaningful noise impact assessment in a planning application as well as details of any extra vehicular movements. The last noise assessment prepared by Clarke Saunders Associates (see BH2013/02219) religiously named every piece of equipment and process within the depot responsible for noise, but failed to monitor that noise from any of the 300 or so households nearest to the depot. It was as if these households responsible for the most complaints were wiped off the map.
No microphones were located within the homes and gardens of the residents' affected by industrial noise (i.e. behind the line of houses on the north side of Princes Road, in Mayo Road or Crescent Road).
Monitoring positions from within Round Hill were from Richmond Road/D'Aubigny Rd, and from Wakefied Road/Richmond Road/Princes Crescent.
On the Hollingdean side of The Waste Transfer Station, no microphones were located in Upper Hollingdean Road (where there are tall blocks of flats: Dudeney Lodge and Nettleton Court) or Davey Drive or in the Downs Infant School playground.
The monitoring positions were in Horton Road and Rugby Road significantly more distant from the residential properties which experience the most noise.
See page 11 point 5.3.1 of Noise impact assessment.
Some projection of the noise which will be generated when the food waste is tipped into sealed containers (frequency, duration and volume) as well as details of transport movements belongs in a 2025 planning application so that we can be given proper detail and a chance to comment. I would be intrigued to see a comment from The Environment Agency too.
A visit to Newhaven Energy Recovery Facility, where food waste is currently tipped into sealed containers of the type planned for Hollingdean Waste Transfer Station, sounds like a very good idea.
What may differentiate Hollingdean Depot from Newhaven Energy Recovery Facility is the number of residential properties surrounding the Hollingdean Waste Transfer Station as well as the design of the building given the limitations posed by the cramped site at Hollingdean Depot.
This page was last updated by Ted on 16-Feb-2025