| title |  |
NEATH PORT TALBOT COUNCIL PLANNING, PREPARING & PALTERING TO POTENTIALLY POISON THE PEOPLE OF POWYS |
| description | This video shows how the Neath Port Talbot Council Planning Department have approved the planning application P2020/0863 in March 2021 with the sole objective to remove the safety requirement of chemical testing from land that has previously been tested and found to be contaminated with toxic waste. This planning approval allows the developer to break the Control of Pollution Act 1974 and the 1990 Environmental Protection Act to remove toxic waste from the site without a licence and also to move it closer to homes in Glynneath which have already suffered deaths that can be linked to toxic waste. Subsequent to this the Chair of the relevant scrutiny committee at the Neath Port Tabot Council can be seen to support the paltering of the public officials he is elected to regulate. |
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| SC01 | LYFF dive - title POISON the PEOPLE of POWYS | |
| SC02 | I love Powys, my favourite place in the whole wide world is in Powys, Llyn y Fan Fawr, you've just witnessed me diving into the lake at sunrise, its a beautiful place. | |
| SC03 | I live in the next county Neath Port Talbot and have done for most of my life but in my triathlon & cycling careers I spent a lot of time riding the roads and lanes Powys. | |
| SC04 | On my rides home from Powys, I'd stop here and checkout what was happening. Quite often the lorries that brought waste to the site could be seen tipping the waste into deep holes and backfilling. 8 years ago you could see my house from here. | |
| SC05 |  |
And
8 years ago, you could see the gate I was just at from my
garden.
What has happened in between then and now is that the Cuddy Group tipped at the site and the slope that you can see here is the edge of a spoil heap that kept growing and growing. |
| SC06 | Cuddy land image | In 2016 I started to ask questions of the council about it and that's when I found out they were going to build houses there. But the spoil heap still kept growing and in the end, we as a community said enough is enough and organised an end to it. |
| SC07 | Cuddy Film | The land it would seem was owned by the Cuddy Group, one of the world's largest demolition and asbestos removal companies. When we stopped them dumping spoil there they put in another housing development planning application in to dump another 5 metres of spoil. Clearly this was a front for dumping waste which we stopped and then they went bust. |
| SC08 | Enzo photo
Planning Notice |
The land was bought by Enzos Homes and in March 2020 a planning notice appeared in my garden. Enzo was a housing developer so they were really going to build houses at the site. It sounded a most ridiculous idea and I wanted to know more so I started researching the history of the site and that's when I found out that. |
| SC09 | 2008 Contam | I was living next to a toxic waste dump and the council had worked with the Cuddy Group in 2010 to hide chemical contamination. |
| SC10 | Nigel film | I talked to my neighbours and others living in my street. This is Nigel, he's witnessed barrels of what he believes was toxic waste being dumped on the site. He actually walked up onto the site and gave the barrels a kick. |
| SC11 | June film | and this is June she lives in the closest proximity to the site. |
| SC11 | PSP doc
|
She had to buy a second tele to drown out the noise of the machinery and had to stay inside to avoid the dust. This probably saved her life, because June lives smack bang in the middle of a PSP cluster. Two residents have died from an extremely rare neurodegenerative disorder that can be linked to contamination in a town in Northern France. |
| SC12 | Cuddy land satelitte | These are not isolated incidents, they are typical of the area. Everyone in Glynneath knows the site as the 'tip' because that's what it is, a landfill site, always has been. |
| SC13 | Enzo's plans went to the Planning Committee for approval and at this point in time I had 18 properties asking me to represent them with a combined total of approximately 600 years living next to the tip. They each had their own story of hell next to the site, dust, death and disgusting smells were all part of the story of the site. | |
| SC14 | me planning | I told the NPT Council Planning Committee this at a meeting in September 2020 and then I told them they had rubber stamped Planning Department malpractice and they were being asked to do it again. |
| SC15 | GJP | The Developer's Agent however set the record straight following my representation at the meeting. Integrity is not a planning matter he states. He said that the land had been tested extensively. The Contaminated Land Officer knew better and he disagreed. |
| SC16 | CPC CLO | The Planning Department, Planning Committee and Local Councillors gave lip service to protecting the residents, they gave empty promises saying that they would make sure that the correct chemical testing would be done at all levels prior to any work starting at the site. Then they once more rubber stamped planning department malpractice. |
| SC17 | Nigel 2 | Let's check again to see what Nigel witnessed, we checked again a couple of days later to make sure we heard Nigel correctly the first time. |
| SC18 | Enzo cond photo | What happened next was that Enzo broke the conditions, he started work on the site and then he put in a planning application P2020/0863 to remove the spoil heap without testing it for contamination first. |
| SC19 | contam image | A day later Enzo had
the land set to be removed chemically
tested for his next set of plans and when the test
came back and contamination was confirmed, he still carried on
working, taking the spoil off site.
Residents complained to local councillors and the council that Enzo was breaking the conditions and the council ignored their complaints. |
| SC20 | Footage | Enzo kept breaking conditions so we jumped in ours cars and followed the lorries into Powys, JLA Recycling at Cwmtwrch to be exact. |
| SC21 | NRW
Powys |
We reported the tipping of contaminated land at an unlicenced facility to the Powys County Council and Natural Resources Wales who we assumed reported it to NPTC because the next thing we know Enzo had been shut down at the site for breaking 14 of the conditions relating to his planning approval. This is something he'd been doing for 6 weeks and it took and it took a trip to Powys to stop it. |
| SC22 | 0863 | Enzo sold the land but his plans to remove the safety element of chemical testing were passed in March 2021, allowing a new developer the remove the spoil heap. The plans P2020/0863 had no other purpose than to remove the safety requirement for the chemical testing of an area that had previously in 2008 and more recently in 2020 been chemically tested and found to be contaminated. |
| SC23 |  |
This is one of the Planning Committee, Stephen Karl Hunt |
| SC24 | SKH anthem | and this is him at the planning meeting. |
| SC25 | im | He's now the Council Leader at Neath Port Talbot but following the passing of the plans to remove the safety requirement of testing the spoil heap we contacted him in his role as the Chairman of Regeneration and Sustainable Development Scrutiny Committee which is responsible for scrutinising issues relating to Contaminated Land. He arranged a meeting between himself and the various heads of department at NPTC and he asked me to supply questions for them to answer. I wanted to clarify the purpose of the meeting, so I asked him what it was? |
| SC26 |  |
Councillor Hunt said:
The purpose of the meeting is to specifically discuss your issues as you brought them to me in my role as Chairman of Regeneration and Sustainable Development Scrutiny Committee , land contamination falls under my portfolio so my obliged if asked by any member of the public to try and find answers to their questions............ So if you bullet point once more some questions as specifically to the land contamination, I will endeavour to get you answers, I suspect they will say or explain they have given you answers previously but I’m prepared to give them a proper grilling on your behalf, I hope that explains the purpose of the meeting, as I do take my job and position very seriously indeed and if I’m able to help residents wherever they live across NPTCBC I will, thanks once more Steve. |
| SC27 |  |
So I provided him with 5 questions, these can be found on-line by following the links on the front page of www.walk-around-wales.com I included the reason why I was asking the questions and supplementary information such as planning department documents. |
| SC28 | 
 |
Following the meeting
we heard nothing from Councillor Hunt so we chased him up for
his feedback which was:
I haven’t to date received any further correspondence or
information yet, but I’m not going to lie to you on how the
meeting went as it was highly charged , Nicola Pearce Director
of the Environment joined the meeting late , at the meeting was
Calvin Davies Environmental Health Team Leader, Ceri
Morris Head Of Planning & Public Protection and Steve
Ball Development Manager - Planning, there was no
representative from NRW but apologies were given as I asked for
these representatives late apparently. |
| SC29 |  |
We knew this not to be
the case, Councillor Hunt then went silent so we provided him
with the relevant truth:
Hi Steve - can we move forward on this now please, the Planning Department are not going to answer the questions because they are covering up the historical Corporate Manslaughter of people in my street with the intention to continue this practice and place the residents in further danger to cover their tracks. The answers to our questions will provide you with evidence of this and so they have attempted to discredit me verbally but when it comes to committing information that can be recorded on file they will not oblige.............. The main cause of this problem is Steve Ball, everyone else is supporting his deception and refusal to follow protocol. |
| SC30 | im | Not long after
Councillor Hunt replied
It would seem that Steve Ball had seen the writing on the wall or was pushed into leaving. |
| SC31 | Almost 3 months after the meeting we had the final reply from Councillor Hunt which failed to provide a satisfactory answer to any of the questions asked and attempted to use crude paltering methods in an attempt to deceive us. | |
| SC32 | 
xv/06-palter |
If you are not aware of the term 'Paltering', it means to talk or act insincerely, deceitfully, lie or use trickery, it is a form of deception used by the planning officials at NPTC when they are dealing with incompetent councillors such as Councillor Stephen Karl Hunt. They had previously used it in the planning meeting to which Councillor Hunt responded with a pat on the back. |
| SC33 | skh - pc meet film | |
| SC34 | 
|
If we look at the
Councillor's letter we will see that on the surface it looks as
if a full and detailed answer has been given. However on closer
inspection we can see that in this instance Councillor Hunt has
been provided information within an irrelevant time zone.
The 5 questions asked all relate to historical actions by the planning department or to historical information submitted to the planning department. The 5 questions all relate to the past, not the present or the future. Then if we refer to the Head of Planning's response to Councillor Hunt, we will see that in the first instance he starts his response in the present "In respect of the current planning status" The word current indicating the present and then he moves into the future, neither time zone is relevant to the questions asked and so the historical questions that point Councillor Hunt to corruption within his planning department remain unanswered. If we refer again to Councillor Hunt's opening statement |
| SC35 | SKH | I’m prepared to give them a proper grilling on your behalf........... |
| SC36 | Cuddy
toxic |
All we've noted to date from Councillor Stephen K Hunt is a failure to do any job diligently for which he's elected and paid to do. This I would suggest is one of the reasons why around 40,000 - 50,000 cubic metres of toxic waste have 'Powys' planned as its destination. |
| SC37 | film | One last word about Powys, I'm at Alder Avenue in Glanrhyd, Ystradgynlais, I spent many a happy hour here with at my Uncle Bill and Auntie Vera's house. Vera Davies was my Dad's sister and we'd visit quite often, I'd spend hours exploring the garden and neighbourhood. I love Powys and I wish you all the best. |
| SC38 | film |
As a resident of Neath-Port Talbot I would like to personally apologise for the actions of my disgusting council and the disturbing content of this video. I'm fighting to live in a safe environment for myself, my family and a group of elderly residents and I'm using every means at my disposal to do so. |
