Council amenity site too small

Council amenity site too small

19 February 2014

DOWN Council’s civic amenity site in Downpatrick is struggling to cope with increasing demand, a local politician has warned.

Staff at the Cloonagh Road facility were forced to only allow people with green waste to enter the facility last Sunday afternoon as all other skips were full.

Skips at the complex are not emptied over the weekend and councillor Liam Johnston believes this is impacting on the amount of waste which can be dumped and left for recycling.

He said the district’s other civic amenity sites in Ballynahinch and Castlewellan are ultra-modern with special machines which allow waste to be compacted, increasing their respective capacity.

Councillor Johnston said Down Council has been attempting to secure a new civic amenity site in Downpatrick for almost a decade, warning the time has come for the local authority to “deliver for ratepayers.”

He said staff at the Cloonagh Road complex are rightly praised for the job they do and cannot be blamed for skips filling up quickly, particularly over the weekend.

“It should not come as a surprise to anyone that Cloonagh Road is busy on Saturdays and Sundays when people are off work. The site caters for people across a wide area and the bottom line is that it’s struggling to cope,” said councillor Johnston.

“Cloonagh Road is too small and Down Council is well aware of this. The local authority missed the opportunity to purchase the vacant Northern Ireland Water site next door to develop a new civic amenity site and has been scrambling around for years looking for an alternative.”

Councillor Johnston suggested it is rather ironic that the district’s biggest town has the smallest civic amenity site which can no longer cope with the volume of waste being dumped.

“People in Downpatrick and the surrounding area have watched new facilities open in Castlewellan and Ballynahinch while they wait for theirs. It’s time a new site was identified and purchased and this should not be hard to achieve. I believe there are a number of suitable sites which local authority officials should be pursuing,” he declared.

Councillor Johnston added: “Developing a new civic amenity site in Downpatrick must be one of Down Council’s priorities. There’s little point encouraging people to use such a facility if the one they currently have can’t cope.”

A Down Council spokeswoman confirmed the Cloonagh Road facility stopped accepting general waste for its last operating hour on Sunday as all the skips were full. She said the local authority has reviewed what happened and has arranged for skips to be emptied at weekends to prevent a repeat of last Sunday’s episode.

“Cloonagh Road is busy most days of the week, with weekends proving popular with users,” she continued.

The spokeswoman also confirmed that a new possible site for a civic amenity site has been identified in the Downpatrick area and Down Council is in the process of evaluating the purchase of the land, subject to planning approval.