The special public meeting in Ivybridge about Viridor’s plans for an incinerator at New England Quarry to take place at 2pm on Saturday, November 21, will have an empty chair where the Viridor representative should be.
Viridor’s technical development manager told thisisplymouth: “We won’t be going because they chose a Saturday when we have no one available.” Presumably Viridor staff have their own public meetings to attend on Saturday.
“We have absolutely nothing to hide and we’re more than happy to talk to them,” he continued. “But if they are going to choose a weekend to hold a meeting it would be best to talk to us first.”
Who would have thought that the public would hold a public meeting that was convenient for the public.
It certainly bodes well for the future of the relationship between the incinerator and the town.
• Read the announcement of the public meeting.
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Maybe this may be a little to simple. But the equation should be: No Public Consulation = No Incinerator.
I think that is a good equation Nick, but I think the main problem is in the definition of a public consultation. I think both private companies and governmental organisations need some clear guidelines on what steps must be completed in order to be able to say that they have completed a thorough public consultation (I don’t know if there are any already, but if there it seems they need rewriting or at least enforcing).
Viridor seems to think that they have completed their consultation: http://www.viridor-consultation.co.uk/index.php?contentId=162
They held an exhibition in Ivybridge one evening and announced the exhibition in the press, but hardly anyone knew that it was going on – probably because they don’t use the word incinerator to publicise their plans, most people that did hear anything just thought the proposal was for some kind of recycling plant and it slipped their notice. They also wrote a press release saying that they had delivered 7,000 leaflets to homes in the area, but I ask every single person I speak to whether they received one, and up until now, after knocking on many doors and speaking to over 100 people, only two people thought they had ever seen a leaflet, and it is not sure whether that was the one from Viridor or not (might have been one of Luke’s!).
I don’t think putting on an exhibition, for people to arrive in dribs and drabs to be given a sales talk is a satisfactory way of finding out what people really think. If people are not presented with all the facts (ie, that an ‘energy from waste facility’ is a new term used for the word ‘incinerator) then how can they be expected to give their honest opinions?
Public consultations are a great idea, but unless clear guidelines are written on how to carry one out and until such guidelines are enforced, public consultations will continue to be an excuse for nothing more than PR campaigns.