Councillors have backed the controversial plans for a tip at Locksbrook Road in Bath, but the decision could be challenged in the courts.
An artist’s impression of how the recycling centre will look | Image © B&NES Council
Bath & North East Somerset Council’s planning committee approved the plans for a new household waste and recycling centre to replace the one at Midland Road, despite 189 objections. There had been five comments of support.
The site currently comprises the council’s street cleansing depot and a car park used by the nearby VW garage. The street cleansing operation will be retained.
The site will replace the recycling centre at Midland Road half a mile away, where planning permission has already been secured for 176 homes.
Concerns had been raised about flood risk, reduced services, accessibility due to a gantry system, and the impact on the local business and residential community, including environmental health, traffic safety and congestion.
The protest outside the Guildhall on Wednesday 9th April 2025
Nineteen Bath businesses publicly opposed the scheme, with employers including Bath Spa University and Horstman warning of increased traffic, parking chaos, and the impact on jobs and growth.
But at Wednesday’s meeting, six Liberal Democrat councillors voted in favour of the proposals while three opposition councillors voted against them.
Local councillors Samantha Kelly (Newbridge, Liberal Democrat) and George Tomlin (Kingsmead, Liberal Democrat) spoke at the meeting, imploring members to take local people’s concerns into account.
Committee chair Councillor Ian Halsall (Liberal Democrat, Oldfield Park) stressed that party politics are “left at the door” when it comes to planning as it is a regulatory committee.
But campaigners against the proposals, who staged a protest outside the Guildhall before the meeting, believe the decision was very much political.
The Stop the Locksbrook Tip group has confirmed it is now exploring legal action, including strategic climate litigation and judicial review of the decision.
Speaking after the meeting, Tim Wallace, chair of the group, said: “I think it is remarkable that the vote went on party lines, that the Lib Dems voted as a block in favour of it.
“It suggests that it was not decided on the merits but is saving the face of the Lib Dems who had made an election promise to deliver a replacement tip, even if that tip is sub-standard.”
Climate scientist and campaign group member Dr Steve Rocliffe told the committee: “As a council, you have policies for net zero, clean air, zero waste, and the climate emergency. But these do zero good if, as here, you ignore them. If you say one thing and do another.
“The proposal before you today delivers neither the ‘like-for-like’ replacement the public was promised, nor any progress towards your climate goals.
“It cuts recycling provision by 70%, capacity by 20%, and places a major public facility on a floodplain – somewhere the National Planning Policy Framework says it should not go.
“It leaves residents wanting to recycle what they currently do with two options: drive to Keynsham, assuming it’s not on fire [a reference to the blaze at the recycling centre there the day before]; any way increasing emissions, journey times and congestion. Or recycle less, and landfill more.”
After the meeting, Dr Rocliffe said: “When you mark your own homework the result is always going to be a foregone conclusion.”
Pam Richards, a former Bath Labour councillor who lives just off Locksbrook Road, and who was vocal from the public gallery during the meeting, said afterwards that the council’s cabinet had in 2021 approved a site at Odd Down to replace Midland Road, and the campaign group had found no evidence of that decision being revoked.
Pam Richards and Tim Wallace
She told the Bath Echo: “Of course it’s political. They (the council) have been boxed into a corner. They’ve sold the Midland Road site, and then of course they had to scurry around.
“They’d spent a lot of money researching areas and the one that came out as suitable was surprise, surprise, not Locksbrook Road but Odd Down – but of course Odd Down is in private ownership.”
Last autumn, Andy Ridings, owner of the well-established Waste Recycling Bath facility at Odd Down, said the council’s cabinet had unanimously agreed three years previously that his facility was the only suitable replacement for the Midland Road recycling centre.
After Wednesday’s planning committee decision, he told the Bath Echo: “We are pleased the council has satisfied its own planning requirements for a waste recycling site, but it makes a mockery of the allocation system.
“Our Odd Down waste recycling facility was allocated, under B&NES’ own Joint Waste Core Strategy, for all the types of waste envisaged at Locksbrook Road. Why have an allocation system if you then ignore it?”
The plans for Locksbrook Road were submitted by the council last summer and updated to take into account some of the concerns raised.
Council planning officers said that the new recycling centre is unlikely to have any significant impact on local roads, that access and parking arrangements are acceptable; and the plans will not lead to unacceptable noise for nearby residents.
Odour will be “negligible” beyond the site boundary, the gull management strategy is considered acceptable, and the plans are policy compliant in terms of flooding and drainage.
Skips will be collected from the site when they are full and taken to Keynsham Recycling Centre for processing.
The tip will open seven days a week and there will be a booking system. It will open at 8am on weekdays with the last public exit at 4pm. On Saturdays, it will open from 9am to 3.45pm and on Sundays from 9am to 1pm.
Construction is due to start in the autumn and the new centre is expected to open in summer 2026.
