Recycling park site 'sounds like a done deal'

It comes after it was revealed that the city council leader warned him about “keeping the locals happy”.

Tory councillor Alec Samuels fired off the private email just days before a feasibility study was launched into whether a new recycling centre and overnight depot for rubbish trucks should be built on a field off Test Lane South, in Redbridge, next to a nature reserve.

Six non-council-owned sites are also being considered.

Cllr Samuels, who last year sparked controversy over an Internet article championing privatisation, which he said was not intended for publication, wrote: “Keeping the locals happy will be an important aspect of the whole matter.”

Campaigner Margaret Wright, 51, who received the email by mistake and has collected a 250-name petition to hand to the council today, slammed the remarks as patronising.

“It sounds like it’s a done deal and we haven’t got much say in the matter,” she said.

However, Councillor Matt Dean, Cabinet member for environment and transport, claimed that it showed how seriously the council took residents’ concerns.

He told a meeting of about 70 Redbridge residents: “There is no agenda to put anything in Test Lane over any of the other sites. It’s not a done deal in any shape or form.”

The city council is spending £250,000 to examine the options over relocating the council’s highways, transport, waste management and recycling operations from Town Depot, by the Itchen Bridge, which will be sold for development. It’s claimed that the move, which will affect 530 employees, is needed because Town Depot is no longer fit for purpose and needs extensive refurbishment.

Residents questioned the suitability of the Test playing field, insisting that it was too prone to flooding and that they would be subjected to bad smells, pollution and disturbance from lorries and cars.

Labour Ward councillor Peter Marsh-Jenks said that there was already enough information to ditch the proposal.

Cllr Dean refused to rule it out until the study reported, but he pledged: “If I thought it would have a detrimental effect on people’s standard of life I would not recommend it to the executive.”

He said that if the proposal for the 15-acre field went ahead there would be a three-acre “buffer zone” from houses in Gover Road and Coniston Road.

The feasibility study will be completed by September.

Cllr Dean said that the study would give value for money, as it was a decision he didn’t want “to get wrong”, and he promised to publish the study’s findings.

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