Waste incinerator protestors to take fight to the streets
Plus: Greens slam decision to cut council tax discount scheme
Hello and welcome to the weekend edition of The Calderdale Lead!
We’ve got a couple of political hot potatoes for you in this edition.
Firstly we speak to campaigners who have been fighting a long-running battle against a waste incinerator in Sowerby Bridge and their plans for a rally next weekend.
And we have reaction to the council’s decision to reduce the amount of council tax relief the poorest in the borough will receive from spring.
Finally, I had the pleasure of meeting Halifax MP Kate Dearden on Friday morning.
It’s clear that she’s got a real passion for the town and has absolutely thrown herself into the role since getting elected last July. (And I have to say I was very jealous that her next appointment after I left was a trip to the Nestle factory in Halifax!).
I’m looking forward to spending some time with her going forward looking at the impact the Government’s growth strategy - as well as that for health, education etc - is going to have on Halifax and the surrounding areas.
So… on with the news!
Incinerator protestors to hold rally as fight continues
Campaigners who have fought a decade-long battle against a waste incinerator in Sowerby Bridge are taking the latest stag of the fight to the streets next weekend.
Using the tagline “Permit approved – but the fight goes on”, campaigners have set next Saturday, February 1, as the date for the rally at which people will be encouraged to sign a petition.
People are asked to meet at 11am at The Moorings pub at the Canal basin in Sowerby Bridge.
Publicised by the Benbow Group and on the Facebook page Say No To Waste Incineration in Ryburn Valley, they are urging supporters to: “Sign the petition – join in and make your voice heard!”
The rally comes quickly on the heels of a challenge potentially being made legally to challenge a controversial Calderdale Council decision over a key environmental permit.
Last November, Calderdale Council granted Calder Valley Skip Hire (CVSH) a key environmental permit allowing the company to use a small waste incineration plant (SWIP) at its Belmont, Sowerby Bridge, premises, at the second time of asking.
A complicated history stretching back nearly 10 years has seen Calderdale Council refuse planning permission for the incinerator, and that decision being overturned on appeal to the planning inspectorate.
However, companies also have to have an environmental permit to run the incinerator, and following the company’s initial 2021 application objectors went to law and won the right to a judicial review of the council Cabinet’s decision to grant the permit.
After this the permit was quashed, following which the status of the permit application was deemed to be “undetermined” and the company appealed the non-determination.
But Planning Inspector John Woolcock, citing risk to health, dismissed this after an inquiry, effectively refusing it – however, as the law stands companies can lodge further applications, and a second was granted by the council late last year.
Last week the resident who set the legal ball rolling over the 2021 application, Malcolm Powell, sent Calderdale Council a Judicial Review Pre-action Protocol Letter to challenge the grant of the latest environmental permit, to which the council has 14 days to respond.
For more information on the protest group click here.
Greens slam decision to cut council tax reduction scheme
The leader of Calderdale’s Green Party says the decision to reduce the amount of council tax relief it offers will have a ‘devastating’ impact on the borough’s poorest residents.
Calderdale Council’s Cabinet’s decision to reduce Council Tax Reduction Scheme support for those eligible in Calderdale down to 70 per cent of the tax, down from 81 per cent, for working age households with the aim of saving £1 million was called-in by concerned councillors.
But at an extraordinary meeting of the full council last week - to allow fuller debate of the issue - a majority of councillors voted to release Cabinet’s decision for implementation.
Labour councillors who called-in the decision said it caused them anguish and they both urged exploration of alternatives cuts which would still allow the council to balance its budget and that pressure should continue to be applied to the new Labour Government for better council funding.
However, they voted to release the reduction decision for implementation as they believed there was other choice, with the council having a legal duty to balance its budget.
Speaking to The Calderdale Lead, Coun Martin Hey, Green Party leader, said: “This policy goes directly against one of Calderdale's three stated priorities – to reduce inequalities.
“For the next financial year, the richest people in Calderdale are likely to be paying 5% more council tax than this year - but the very poorest in Calderdale will be paying over 60% extra. As Green Party councillors, we think this is totally unacceptable.
“The Labour-controlled council appears not to understand the devastating impact of this change on households who are already struggling with a 25% hike in bus fares and the continuation of the two child benefit cap - as well as those under threat from the disability benefit cuts currently being mooted by national government.
“The report discussed at the cabinet meeting when the initial decision was made didn't refer to the disproportionate impact of the change on our Asian community in Calderdale, a huge omission that in our mind makes the whole decision unsafe.”
Labour Coun Stuart Cairney said the decision would put up bills for around 8,000 of Calderdale’s poorest households and although independent scrutineers concluded the borough was better run than most, “a reality of today’s United Kingdom is that a well-run council is having to ask the poorest of its residents for 66 per cent more money than it asked them for last year.”
Coun Cairney welcomed measures he said lobbying by he and others had helped be introduced, including that people defaulting would not be referred to external debt collection agencies, and help offered to them.
Along with other Labour councillors he blamed cuts in national Government funding over the last 14 years for the position the council found itself in.
Leader of the council Coun Jane Scullion said Government funding cuts going back to 2010 and a decision three years later transferring responsibility for the relief from national to local Government – and from national to local taxpayers – had led to this position.
Demands on services it statutorily has to provide was rising and outstripping additional funding, councillors have heard.
Councils hitting resulting issues were either having to ask Government if they could borrow more for revenue – day-to-day – spending costs or were having commissioners appointed to run them as they faced bankruptcy, alternatives she did not want Calderdale to see.
“We do not intend Calderdale Council to be in that position, we are determined to avoid bankruptcy.
“We’re wrestling year on year with services that are universal and those which are discretionary,” she said.
Liberal Democrats suggested a more graduated reduction could be among options looked at and Conservative group leader Coun Steven Leigh suggested not filling council posts as they became vacant within the year could full the gap.
Proposing councillors release Cabinet’s decision for implementation – and with a “heavy heart” – Labour’s Coun Dot Foster said years of funding cuts meant the council had no choice and it made her angry.
But not taking this option, she said, would mean cuts to “absolutely everything else” arguably having an even greater detrimental impact on poorer residents needing those services.
She added: “There’s no good options left. We’ve already cut every service to the bone.
“There isn’t anything left that we can cut that will have the impact that this change will – and I hate to be in the position where I am saying that.”
The reduction will come in for Council Tax bills for 2025-26, due in April.
That’s it for this edition of The Calderdale Lead.
We’ve got so much planned over the next few months so… you’re in a position to do so, please consider taking a paid subscription so I can keep popping into your inbox twice a week with a Calderdale digest and stories.
As always, if you have anything you think I should be reporting on or looking into then I’m on calderdale@thelead.uk
Enjoy what is left of the weekend and we’ll be back in your inbox on Wednesday!
Andrew