A concrete firm has appealed after Bath & North East Somerset Council refused to allow its trial extended weekday working hours to become permanent.
The 4Concrete site
The 12-month trial was to allow Keynsham-based 4Concrete to prove it could control noise levels and stick to a site management plan.
But despite no objection from the council’s environmental health team, council planners listened to the concerns of people living nearby who said that making the extended operating hours permanent would cause “significant harm” due to the increased noise and disturbance.
Following the council’s decision in February, 4Concrete, which serves the Bath and Bristol area, has now appealed to the Secretary of State in a bid to get the council’s decision overturned.
People living near Old Station Yard, off Avon Mill Lane, have been complaining about 4Concrete since the company moved to the site in 2019.
The batching plant was set up without planning permission (it was subsequently granted retrospectively), but objectors say there was no environmental assessment and no noise mitigation was provided initially.
The company then won permission on appeal for large acoustic barriers with a condition that extended hours – starting at 6.30am instead of 7.30am and finishing at 6.30pm instead of 5.30pm – could operate on a temporary basis to prove the system would deliver the promised noise reductions and that 4Concrete could work in accordance with the site management plan.
The trial started in August 2023. But people living nearby said that 4Concrete had broken planning restrictions and failed to comply with the site management plan on more than 70 occasions.
The application to keep the extended hours was submitted to B&NES Council in August 2024 at the end of the trial.
4Concrete’s agent had said that monitoring by its appointed noise consultant had shown that operational noise was significantly reduced and told the council that the extended hours were “vital to the function of the business and its continued operation”.
A senior environmental health officer said that “in the absence of evidence to demonstrate a breach of the limits relevant to the extended hours”, he was unable to object.
But the council planning report said: “A number of objections have been received from local residents, regarding noise and disturbance experienced during the temporary permission period.
“In the early morning hours, objections raise issues of raised voices and vehicle engine noises of staff arriving prior to the start time, and noise from mixing operations, including the sound of aggregate and cement churning in the drum, and bangs and high-pitched noises which disturb sleep.”
The planning report added that “just because a complaint has not been verified as a statutory nuisance, does not mean that harm is not being experienced, nor that breaches have not occurred.
“Considerable weight must be given to the lived experience of those residents who are most impacted by the development and the account from neighbours is one of frequent disturbance from industrial noise … Given discrepancies between acoustic report findings, disturbance reported by neighbours, reliance on modes of operation, and a site management plan which does not cover all activities, officers are not confident that the conditioned noise limits are, or can be, consistently met.”
The appeal was lodged last month. Any comments must be submitted by 25th August. The planning appeal reference is APP/F0114/W/25/3369086.
