County council to recruit to tackle waste and minerals projects

Growing numbers of applications involving minerals and waste have prompted a county council to seek to recruit a new planning officer.

Warwickshire County Council principal planner Ian Grace told Planning: “As the economy picks up minerals are the feedstock for that growing economy.

“We are drawing up our mineral local plan, which is likely to be controversial as the government requires us to have policies relating to non-conventional extraction. 

“We have potential sites for underground coal gasification, exploration of which - like fracking – is unpopular with some people.”

Meanwhile EU directives were discouraging the disposal of waste, which was prompting more applications involving recycling projects, said Grace.

He added: “We have been greatly affected by the National Planning Policy Framework; the streamlining has made planning not more difficult but different. 

“We are in a period of big change and that is affecting workloads because everybody is learning again.”

The main purpose of the new post is to help the county planning authority fulfil its functions on the management of both minerals and waste planning and setting the county’s policy framework.

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