Lower tip, landfill firm told

It has issued a breach of condition notice on Wastepoint after a survey revealed that the site was more than two metres higher in places than it should be.

The notice requires Bradford-based Wastepoint to lower the landfill so it is no higher than the level that was specified in planning permission for the site.

Councillor Robin Owens (Con, Bingley), chairman of the Council's Shipley area planning panel, said the breach added ''insult to injury''. But Waste-point says it has agreed to bring the level down within the notice's 60-day compliance period.

Coun Owens said: "I think it's appalling and a flagrant breach.

"That a national company should be quite deliberately flouting the conditions is disgraceful. The proposed height was bad enough and this is now adding insult to injury.

"The landfill towers over Cullingworth like a mountain at the moment."

Commenting on Coun Owens' response Wastepoint managing director Russell Sikora said: "It is not a flagrant breach of regulations and I'm sure if he spoke to his officers he'd find we are a company which looks for advice from the local authority.''

Mr Sikora said the place where the landfill site was two metres higher than it should be was a "collection of top soil for the restoration of the site'' and that elsewhere it was no more than 50cm above the specified level.

He added: "We have agreed to take it off the site. We don't have a problem doing it and are instigating the necessary procedures within the next month or so.''

Mr Sikora said circumstances beyond Wastepoint's control, which he could not divulge, meant the site had transgressed the agreed height limit.

He said its visual impact would soon diminish, adding: "Hope-fully nobody will know it's been there within a couple of years.''

The tip was given a two-year extension to stay open until 2001 in August 1999, despite an overwhelming majority of villagers who voted in a parish poll calling for it to be shut down.