Portsmouth recycling centre set to run 24 hours a day while incinerator chimney stack is replaced

TJ Waste and Recycling has applied to Portsmouth City Council for a six-month change to planning permission for the Quartremaine Road centre in Copnor, saying was necessary to meet the extra demand while the chimney stack at the Veolia incinerator is replaced.

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‘The applicant is seeking to assist with the planned downtime for the nearby Veolia Energy Recovery Facility to extend the operational hours at site to take diverted material in addition to the daily incoming material,’ a statement submitted with its application says.

‘It is an extensive task and would require on-site apparatus to remove the old stack and erect the new one. Due to health and safety, operational and logistical reasons the use of the site would be significantly impacted.

The work is also expected to regularly mean access to the Veolia facility is blocked, further reducing capacity.

The facilities at the Copnor incinerator site deal with rubbish from Fareham, Gosport, East Hampshire and Winchester, and sort up to 250,000 tonnes of waste a year. At the materials recovery facility, around 50,000 tonnes of waste is sorted through each year.

Discussions have been held between Veolia, TJ Waste and Recycling and the city council in a bid to resolve the issue, prompting the submission of the planning application.

‘In order to accommodate and successfully manage these operations, the current approved operational times will need to be temporarily extended to ensure the waste can be accommodated and dealt with as expediently as possible during this period,’ the statement adds.

Replacement of the chimney stack is expected to start in the spring.

The firm said approving the temporary extension to operational hours would ensure the council can continue kerbside rubbish collections as normal, despite the reduced incinerator capacity and mean it did not need to be transported further away.

The council has set a deadline of March 3 for reaching a decision but it has been urged to do so ‘as expediently as possible’.