Plea for action over huge pile of ‘asbestos’ dumped near Bristol fringe village

People living next to a “huge pile of unknown contaminants believed to include asbestos” in a village on the outskirts of Bristol are urging their local council to take action, amid fears children will be “at risk” if they have access to the site.

Just outside the charming village of Queen Charlton, near Keynsham, a huge site of half-submerged outbuildings, anaerobic digesters built without proper planning permission and “the pit filled with so much unknown material that it now stands six meters” above the surrounding ground . causes concern to his neighbors. The site – which is bigger than Queen Charlton itself – has been disowned by the company that owned it, and now no one is keeping the derelict site safe.

Rob Duff of Protect Our Keynsham Environment, a local group calling for the site to be made safe, said: “I’ve been a town planner since 1983 (…) and this is the worst green belt site I’ve ever had ever. meet.”

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A statement from the group added: “There is strong evidence in court documents and planning documents that asbestos was deposited or found on the site. We won’t know for sure until the B&NES Board do an inspection.”

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Dan Norris and Edmund Cannon – who are all vying to be elected MPs in the area on July 4 for the Conservative, Labor and Green parties respectively – were among around 30 people who staged a protest outside the gates for the site on Wednesday June 5, calling on Bath and North East Somerset Council to take action.

Mr Duff told the protest: “We don’t know what was overturned there on the big hill. We don’t know what contaminants there are, other than we know that asbestos was cut and wood chips. Other than that, it was uncontrollable.”

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He added: “We’re a kilometer from Keynsham, we’re just yards from houses. (If) children (should) come to play here, they are in danger.

“So the residents here would like to know what’s going on there. They would like the council to take action and investigate the site under the powers of environmental protection law and if possible involve the Environment Agency and either tell residents “it’s safe, we’ve cleaned it up, everything has disappeared”, or to secure it”.

“Danger: Deep Water” and “Caution: Guard Dogs on Patrol” wrote signs on the gates. But no one guards the dangerous place. Attendees said the company that owned the site has now dissolved, passing ownership of the site to the Crown as an escheat. Mr Duff said: “The council could have acted on this site over the last eight years and failed to do so. And so now it’s a problem.

“The Crown will not act, it will not take responsibility for the site because it does not have to take responsibility for the site. The ground literally fell on them because the owners left, the company left.

“The only way this site will be made safe is if Bath and North East Somerset acts and here, on behalf of residents, I am asking Bath and North East Somerset to act.

“Come and have a look at the site, come and investigate it and please help the residents to make sure they are safe, their children are safe and the whole area is safe for the future.”

A spokesman for Bath and North East Somerset Council said: “We have taken enforcement planning action by issuing an enforcement notice requiring the unauthorized anaerobic digester plant to be removed from the site. This notice remains in force on the land and would bind any subsequent owner of the land.

“We are also considering taking additional planning enforcement action in relation to unauthorized waste being deposited on the land.”

Despite their differing political views, the candidates for North East Somerset and Hanham who took part in the protest were unanimous that action should be taken.

Mr Norris said: “I am very keen for this site to happen. The B&NES Board must act. We know that there was a huge amount of material – three times my height, 6 meters – that was spread over this general area.”

He called for the site to be inspected to find out what was dumped, adding: “We need to know and we need to find out what is going on, then we need to act if necessary. And I think it probably is.”

Mr Rees-Mogg praised the “remarkable” campaigners. He said: “The Environment Agency at one point were quite good and took an active interest. That seems to have stopped. But the council is singularly failing to enforce the planning restrictions here and, I’m afraid, has done for a long time.”

He added: “I’ve noticed that the council tends to come down quite hard on small-time wrongdoers, individuals who do something that’s a bit more than they should, but does absolutely nothing when people ignore planning rules altogether.

“And this is where B&NES needs to get its act together.”

Mr Cannon added it was a “classic example” of the danger of relaxing planning laws. He said: “There are a lot of people who say that planning restriction makes it harder for developers to develop and I think that shows that planning regulations are actually very weak when it comes to environmental protection and that is at least as big. problem.

“And before people start saying we should build everywhere with green belt and relax rules to make it easier to build, we need to think about all the bad things and unintended consequences that could follow if we made the regulations much more lax .

“And this is a classic example.”

Liberal Democrat candidate Dine Romero was not at the protest, but Mr Cannon said he believed he should have been. He added: “She was the leader of the council when she should have been dealing with this.”

Ms. Romero served as the board leader for two years from 2019 to 2021.

Also up for the North East Somerset and Hanham seats in the July 4 general election are Paul MacDonnell (UK Reform) and Kathleen Haskard (UK Labour).