Drop-in sessions planned for Walleys Quarry residents

The Walleys Quarry public drop-in sessions will take place on successive Tuesdays on the 5th and 12th of October.

Two public face-to-face sessions are to be held next month so people affected by Walleys Quarry can ask questions direct.

Following a series of online meetings, the two drop-in events will be held on successive Tuesdays at Bradwell Lodge Community Centre in Newcastle.

Officers from the Environment Agency (EA), Staffordshire County Council, Public Health England, Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council and Staffordshire Police will be on hand to answer questions about what is happening at the landfill site.

The events are being held at Bradwell Lodge Community Centre, Bradwell Lane, Newcastle-under-Lyme, ST5 8PS, on:

• Tuesday, 5^th October, from 4pm to 8.30pm;
• Tuesday 12^th October, from 2pm to 7pm.

There will be no fixed presentation or speeches, and residents can drop-in at any time during the opening hours and speak directly to representatives of the councils and agencies at different tables.

Letters are being delivered to thousands of homes in the affected areas to make sure as many people as possible know about the sessions.

Numbers in the hall will be monitored to avoid over-crowding and other Covid-related measures may be in place to ensure the health and well-being of all those attending.

Simon Tagg, Leader of Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council, said:

The Borough Council is continuing to receive significant numbers of complaints about foul odours coming from Walleys Quarry which are having a negative impact on residents’ health and quality of life as well as businesses.

We understand the strength of the community’s feelings on this issue; we take it very seriously and are working closely with partners daily to monitor the situation and resolve the ongoing problems as soon as possible. The Council has also served the landfill operators with a statutory nuisance abatement notice legally requiring them to stop the smell. This has been appealed which now triggers a legal process in court.

Keeping residents informed and updated at every turn of this complex and evolving situation is extremely important to us and even though technology has enabled us to do this safely during the pandemic, it’s great that we can now provide an opportunity where we can answer people’s questions directly.”

Alan White, Leader of Staffordshire County Council, added:

Residents of Newcastle have borne the brunt of these problems for too long and I hope they take this opportunity to come along, meet people face-to-face and ask the questions they want answers to.”

Notes to Editors

Produced by Staffordshire County Council on behalf of Staffordshire Resilience Forum (SRF).  

Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent has a strong and well-established Local Resilience Forum which works hard through partners to protect the public.

The SRF is a multi-agency group working towards a common mission and objectives. Representatives include:

• All Category 1 responders in the SRF area – emergency services, local authorities, local health economy including acute and mental health trusts, Public Health England and NHSE and the Environment Agency
• Relevant local Category 2 responders – Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG), Highways England, HSE, utility and transport companies, MHCLG RED Government Liaison Officer
• Military
• Specialists or other stakeholders as required e.g. prisons
• Civil Contingencies Unit as providers of support to multi-agency planning, response and recovery.

Walleys Quarry Limited is currently working to deliver the actions the Environment Agency have instructed them to carry out to manage the odour and landfill gas originating from the site. This includes:

• Developing an action plan to improve the gas management and gas collection. This will see a further 28 gas collection wells drilled across the site over the coming months bringing the total to 83 gas wells.
• Activity to cap the steep flanks of the landfill. This means nearly 70% of the site will be permanently or temporarily capped. Capping is important as landfill gas from the site needs to be better ‘contained’ on the site, rather than escaping off the site. Once contained, it can be processed and destroyed through the gas management system.