I don’t normally take much interest in planning applications, appeals and disputes, but one that is local to me piqued my curiosity as it involves a burning issue, literally. This is the application by the waste management company Veolia to build an incinerator not too far from Jane Austen’s house at Chawton. Given that it is in an area of breathtaking countryside and despite objections from Alan Titchmarsh, CPRE Hampshire, the South Downs National Park Authority and Historic England, among others, the authorities appear to be giving it the go-ahead.
What particularly caught my eye was the following: “But despite this overwhelming opposition, the report states the proposal will ‘allow residual waste, which cannot be reused or recycled, to be managed at the most reasonable level of the waste hierarchy, diverting it from landfill’.”
