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Letter: Land should remain 'agricultural' not plundered for industrial use
IN JULY 2005 Lincoln County Council applied for planning permission to construct a bespoke industrial complex next to the A16 near Kirton.
The site would be designed, Lincoln said, to fit unobtrusively into the local landscape and to provide 300 jobs for the people of Kirton.
Assurances were given that businesses were queuing up to get onto the site, and, as long as planning permission was given before December 2005, Europe would provide 3.5 million towards the cost.
With the abandonment of the then Boston Development Plan things went slightly wrong, but Lincoln still managed to get the money and started work constructing a service road, street lighting and other basic services.
At the time local residents said that it was a speculative venture which would not add anything to employment prospects in Kirton, and would destroy the local environment. Five years later it is still empty.
A few applications have been made but none meet the original criteria, that is, it will look good and bring jobs for Kirton. One proposal, still on the cards, is for the construction of an eight acre shed almost 50 feet high, with around 300 vehicle movements a day.
The latest proposal, from Lincoln, is a household waste clearance and recycling plant (waste transfer station) designed to sort household rubbish and then distribute some of it to a new electricity generating plant at North Hykeham near Lincoln for use as fuel, a 70-mile round trip for about 60 large lorries per day. I presume the rest will either be recycled or sent to landfill.
The basic flaws with this sort of operation are well known; numerous heavy vehicle movements and smell being the most obvious. These problems will affect not only Kirton but all surrounding villages. The project is not in conformity with the current Development Plan but, as substantial sums of taxpayers' money have been spent on installing underlying services, Lincoln will get away with it.
It now appears that Lincoln has purchased the remaining 10 acres to fill in the final section of the area between A16, Wash Road and Drainside South, which, with previous planning approval, gives a potential industrial site of between 80 and 100 acres from Station Road to Drainside South available for development.
It is proposed that the residents of Kirton, and surrounding villages, submit a petition to the local authority objecting to the waste transfer station, and the removal of land from agricultural production at a time when the country cannot provide its own basic food needs, and the world price of, for example, wheat is rising due to crop failures in our supplier countries, especially Russia and Canada.
I urge all residents to sign the petition.
REV KEN STILL
Kirton
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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