Council bosses have assured Bath residents they will not be left without a recycling centre when the current “unfit for purpose” site in the city closes.
Aequus’s plans for the Midland Road recycling centre | Image © Stride Treglown
Its development company, Aequus, has submitted plans to redevelop the Midland Road with 176 flats as part of the 2,281-home Western Riverside masterplan.
Documents emerged last week showing that Bath and North East Somerset Council is in early talks about consolidating facilities in Midland Road with other council units at a redeveloped site at Pixash Lane in Keynsham.
But the council confirmed on Friday 16th October that sites are being investigated to build one or more replacement recycling centres in Bath.
Councillor David Wood, the joint cabinet member for neighbourhood services, said: “Bath residents will not be left without at least one, and possibly more, centres for household waste and recycling in the city.”
But the council has not yet indicated where the new facilities might be or what progress has been made with identifying sites.
A site plan for the Midland Road redevelopment | Image © Stride Treglown
Before it submits formal proposals for Pixash Lane it has requested a scoping opinion so see what needs to be included in the application.
It says the compact facilities at Midland Road – along with the vehicle depot at Ashmead Road in Keynsham and the public MOT garage in Locksbrook Road in Bath – could be consolidated onto a single site in Pixash Lane, which is already home to the town’s recycling centre but will expand to four hectares.
The purpose-built recycling centre could be in place by the end of 2022, allowing the space at Midland Road to be released to meet “the much needed demand for new housing”, a quarter of which would be affordable.
The site sits within the Western Riverside masterplan, which was approved in 2010.
A council spokesperson said: “The decision to progress the relocation of the waste, recycling and transfer station operations from Midland Road was made in January 2019, following an announcement by the council that the site was “unfit for purpose” the previous year.
“Plans to relocate the operational services to Pixash Lane have also been developed over many years.
“Submitting an environmental impact assessment scoping report for consideration by the council’s planning department and external consultees is the first stage of the EIA process, prior to a detailed report going before the planning committee.”
Stephen Sumner, Local Democracy Reporter
