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COURT OF APPEAL REJECTS CONTROVERSIAL DERBYSHIRE LANDFILL SITE

Nov 11 2004

A Derbyshire community today won an important legal victory in the Court of Appeal in their long standing battle to protect their community from the effects of waste disposal after three judges refused to allow a controversial landfill site application to go-ahead.

For more than thirty years the local communitiesof Doe Lea, BramleyVale and Glapwellin Derbyshire have been surrounded by the effects of landfill, opencast coal mining and waste transfer stations.

The community eventually went to Court to overturn Derbyshire County Council's decision to approve the operation of a further waste landfill site [1]. Although, the community won their court case in the High Court in November 2003 the waste disposal company, Derbyshire Waste Ltd, appealed against that judgment. That appeal was dismissed this morning by the Court of Appeal.

"This case shows that local people can use the law to protect their environment. Communities and environmental NGOs have an important role to play in upholding environmental law in the face of continuing bad decision making by public authorities and regulators."

Friends of the Earth's Planning Adviser Hugh Ellis said:

"This is an incredible vindication of the effectiveness of community campaigning. The community was told it would never be able to defeat the application. But has twice been to court and twice won. We hope that this case will be a beacon to other communities wanting to protect themselves from the continuing unsustainable creation of landfill sites in their areas."

Notes

[1] The decision of the Council was made in March 2002. The site is known as `Glapwell 3' at the former Glapwell Colliery, Sutton, Scarsdale near Bolsover in North-East Derbyshire. The site was designed to receive 850,000 cubic metres of waste over four years.

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