NEATH PORT TALBOT COUNCIL CORRUPTION - 

PLANNING DEVELOPMENT MANAGER STEVE BALL

Initially I dealt with planning officer Nicola Lake who eventually passed me on to Steve Ball.

It may seem trivial to some people that  

2 - The information has already been received "we've also had um correspondence from Mr Richards throughout the course of this application which has raised if not all, certainly almost all of the matters raised within the literature in any event"

3 - The representation section summarises everything received - "so what I was gong to say under the representation section is quite a lengthy representation summary has been provided (52.40) um and that I would say summarises everything within the submissions"

(Later on he says that objections have been received form 40 houselholds and "all" of their concerns have been summarised.

In 2008 a Geo-Technical report which tested the land and confirmed that it was contaminated was submitted to the NPTC. Even though the land was inadequately tested to a depth of less than 2 metres it was found that two thirds of the soil samples tested were found to be contaminated. This would suggest that nearly 70% of the Enzo site is contaminated. Two of the contaminants found in 2008 are classified as grade 1 carcinogens. 

The Geo-Technical report provided evidence of a pathway from source to receptor and included a remediation strategy and a validation report. This is clear evidence the surveyors considered the level of contamination to be either Category 1 or Category 2 human health contamination. If land contains either of these categories then the council has a responsibility to ensure that the land is remediated under the UK Governments Environmental Protection Act 1990.

There is no evidence of any liaison between the planning department and the Contaminated Land Team at the Neath Port Talbot Council in 2008. In 2009 the Cuddy Group withdrew the planning application with the report containing the contamination and it was never seen again in the planning process.

In 2010 the Cuddy Group submitted a new planning application and a Geo-Technical report without any chemical testing. The Cuddy Group re-defined the land as a 'brownfield' site which would suggest that remediation had already taken place. There is no evidence of this. The Cuddy Group have bypassed the remediation of the contaminated land process. 

NRW info page

CUDDY PERMIT 2014 - CLICK HERE

We can see that Cuddy has removed fully grown trees without permission and the variety of colour and haphazard shape of the tipped material gives rise to the question, what was Cuddy dumping? (image courtesy of Ian & Dorothy Williams)

Around this time Jordan Beale, age 9 was playing on the site and building dens out of the materials found there. One day Jordan and his friend arrived home with a fridge door. It became illegal to dump fridges and freezers in UK landfill sites on 1 January 2002. The fridge door Jordan brought home was dumped illegally and is classed as hazardous waste. 

1 - Image one shows the Cuddy machine busy at work.

2 - Image two shows recently disturbed ground in two isolated spots in the tipped area. 

3. Image three shows machine tracks to these isolated locations.

The following is a statement from a local resident which formed part of an objection to the planning application for this site. 

"The back of the house including my garden overlooks the tip as I am on top of Bryhyfryd Hill. I get up several times in the night to use the toilet. I have seen a number of lorries dumping in the pitch dark, also at one time with Cuddy and company they kept a machine over there, by day the Cuddy worker would turn up and unbury everything [meaning they would dig up the top of the previous day's hole just above what they had dumped the previous day] I (Dai Richards am also witness to this type of activity, I cycle regularly down the Banwen Rd and I used to stop and watch the Cuddy' vehicles at work]. "I've also been over there (to the proposed Enzo site) early in the morning and seen large metallic barrels containing what I believe to be asbestos, I am familiar with asbestos and I have seen broken bits pushed down into the ground . The barrels also contained chemicals and when the Cuddy machine driver turned up at 8.00am in the morning they were pushed into the ground. There were lorries during the day which were bringing stuff from I don't know where but they were burying all the waste. (I asked this resident  how far away he was from the barrels?) He replied. I kicked them and they were full, they were not empty. 

On Friday (16/10/2020) we release a video that provides evidence of Steve Ball lying to the planning committee at the meeting dated 8/9/2020. We follow this with an analysis and suggestion that he is fabricating information to allow permission for approximately 50
to 100 trees with TPOs to be destroyed. The purpose of this email is two fold:

We request a response from NPTC and offer the opportunity to provide counter documentary evidence that supports Steve Ball's claim that:

1. The EG-RAC Council of Death report was received by email.

2 That Steve Ball confirmed that the information contained in the EG-RAC Council of Death report was received too late for inclusion in the meeting but it had all been received previously anyway. This is a chronological contradiction, that is the information had been
received too late and that it had already been received. If this information is not contradictory then perhaps you can explain how this is not the case. To help you prove your case you should back it up by uploading all the residents objections to your malfunctioning website to include the correspondence between myself, the Council Leader, Ceri Morris, Craig Griffiths and Nicola Pearce which could all be considered as part of the planning process. The subject I refer to of course is the allegation that your council has breached the 1990 Environmental Protection Act.

3. That it is allowable to destroy the trees because there is an information gap and because the plans are not contained on a fresh piece of paper. Our video will focus on the fact that Steve Ball lied to the planning committee at least twice and then that the
majority of the information contained in his representation about the trees being removed is most likely fabricated based upon these previous lies to the committee.

20201015A-EM-NPTC-PLAN-ball-fabrication (extract)  

The Council is content that the information that was placed before the Planning Committee in September
2020 was accurate and took into account all comments and representations made during the planning
application process.

We dispute any suggestions that fabricated information was placed before the Planning Committee.

To respond to your concerns though, the documentation you refer to was forwarded to officers of the Planning
section when received by Members. This information was however provided out of time for it to be formally
reported to Members at the Planning Committee. However, officers concluded and advised Members that the
information in your prepared document reflected the extensive submissions made previously and had thus
been considered by officers in producing the final report.