Deeside incinerator plans approved by Flintshire councillors

A decision to throw out plans for a waste incinerator on Deeside Industrial Estate has been reversed and pushed through by Flintshire councillors.

A special committee rejected the £800m plans last month but they were approved after a rethink on Friday.

The firm behind the plans said 200,000 tonnes of black bag waste from five north Wales councils would be burned.

They have signed an agreement to tackle non-recyclable waste collectively.

In April the plans were refused amid claims the scale and type of facility were not needed, that the proposal failed to identify a receptor for the energy generated and it would have an unacceptable impact on traffic.

However, council officials said the decision went against recommendations and was a significant departure from the authority's own planning policy, so the planning committee reconsidered the decision on Friday.

US company Wheelabrator was selected as the preferred bidder for the 25-year contract, which is worth about £800m, to run the Parc Adfer facility.

The councils looking to process non-recyclable waste via the incinerator are Flintshire, Denbighshire, Conwy, Gwynedd and Anglesey.

Wrexham council is the only local authority in north Wales pushing forward with its own plans to tackle black bag rubbish which goes into landfill each year.