Plans to build Aldridge 'super tip' set to be backed
Plans to build a ‘super tip’ on a derelict industrial estate have been given the go-ahead.
Walsall Council is to build the new Household Waste Recycling Centre in Middlemore Lane, Aldridge.
It will be built on the former McKechnie Brass Ltd site on the Redhouse Industrial Estate after the plans were approved at a council planning meeting on Thursday.
The new Aldridge site will operate seven days a week from 8am to 7pm and the waste transfer station on the same sit will operate seven days a week from 7am to 6pm.
The new site will also house a “re-use and up-cycling shop” selling household furniture and goods and a trade waste facility for small businesses. The centre will have a capacity of 40,000 tons a year while the waste transfer station, where waste is sorted, will have a 125,000-ton capacity. Once the new development is built, the existing Aldridge tip, on Merchants Way, would be closed.
But Aldridge Central and South’s Councillor Bobby Bains said: “I cannot support this application - It’s a monster tip. Walsall is getting bigger, there’s going to be more cars.”
Meanwhile an existing fire-damaged tip in Fryers Road, Bloxwich, will be demolished and a new, larger facility will also be built on the site, in plans also backed last night.
The new and improved facilities in Aldridge will help the council to achieve the Government’s environmental targets, to recycle at least 65 per cent of Walsall’s waste by 2035 and send no more than 10 per cent of waste to landfill.
The plans will take place in stages, with new facilities completed at Middlemore Lane, the Fryers Road tip closing for redevelopment, and when both are back open the Merchants Way tip will shut.
Councillor Aftab Nawaz, of St Matthew’s ward, told the meeting: “If you look at these sites they have passed their sell by dates. It is about time we did something better and updated it in an environmental and energy sense.”
Both schemes were approved including a condition that after six months of opening, a traffic report relating to the Middlemore Lane site is submitted. Council chiefs have insisted the facilities will be more than a traditional “tip”.
