That was the Winter of 2010, when everyone called me Ba*tard , and it didn’t occur to me to mind. That was before Osama Bin Laden was shot, before One Direction, when I couldn’t wait to join two pieces of paper together to form a chain and I never thought I’d find out what lies beneath rattechain lagoon!
It started in the bleakest Winter for over 30 years in earnest. Diggers appeared on top of the mound that once featured the Rattlechain brickworks which had been replaced by Mintworth’s massive over tipped pile of foundry sand.
Here’s video I took of this at the time.
What was going on here, after an apparent long lull in any site activity? The site as we know had been left largely abandoned following this companies apparent “liquidation”.
Sandwell council had for reason’s only known to themselves actually used £14,000 of tax payers money to fence off Mintworth’s “derelict site” from the long suffering residents of Gladstone Drive, who not adverse to suffering “misery” from their foundry sand tipping, were now experiencing “scavengers” and “tatters” as well as motor bike enthusiasts- all of course due to the lack of any site security. In actual fact this had been going on since the 1970’s according to correspondence on file.
Why did tax payers have to fund the fencing of private land, and not the site owner?
How remarkable then that although they had apparently gone into “liquidation”, and also not met the requirements of the site licence SL947 leading to its surrender, but had in fact bypassed this by liquidating, that they should assume the right to once again use Johns Lane and the canal as a means of gaining access up to their abandoned mound.
Signs appeared on the fence line of the Rhodia site, and it was quite apparent that damage was being caused not only to this but also the track up to the canal with the new unusual heavy traffic.
The diggers and large pieces of machinery kept coming, and the eventual thaw revealed large movements of material, well within the Duport’s Tip area. A friend of mine decided to take a short cut home to carry a water bowser and discovered quite a few shocking sites.
A massive crater had been carved out in an area that included the stated “Duport’s Tip”. A large blue piece of machinery loomed like an invading spacecraft that had settled in the pit. It was quite a mess, and several metres deep!
“NO BODY PUTS FOUNDRY IN THE CORNER…”
Silica- a human carcinogen
Worse than this silica packaging, with the clear warning on the red packaging that this was a human carcinogen. It was evident in the carved out water filled craters that much of the so called rags, scrap packaging etc was still there and had not been removed from the site.
This overload!
For scale, a meter ruler highlighted was placed at the foot of one of the new crevasses. See middle of picture if you enlarge it.
Johnny’s castle?
Having reviewed my friends pictures, I approached both Sandwell MBC and The Environment Agency. The latter effectively told me “not us GOV- see Sandwell council. The council effectively told us to see the EA!
It is exactly this type of BS that unfortunately allowed this rotten site, and that at the lagoon to exist in the first place, particularly for those who know how to exploit them both.
According to John Baylay- (aka the man from Del Monte at Sandwell on account of how he always liked to say “YES” to Mintworth’s many planning applications) , these works he ascertained were for purposes as follows.
“I attended a site meeting with the owner (John Hurst of Mintworth Transport Ltd) in August 2010 and again in February 2011. I have made several other site inspections from nearby roads and the canal since then.
The site owner has explained that: –
1. Settlement, scouring and erosion, criminal damage to the perimeter security, and extensive ‘tatting’ for metals has left the site far from the state that it was left in on completion of the approved reclamation/landfill operation well over 10 years ago;
2. The activities undertaken have been for the purpose of repairing and making the site safe; returning it to the state in which it was, and reducing the likelihood of trespass and/or accident.
3. The activities have involved the placement of screened foundry sand over exposed slags and lumps; re-dressing the slopes to make them safe; and, improving vegetation cover over parts of the site.
ahem
4. The screened material has been obtained has been obtained by screening existing fill materials on the site.
5. The activities are matters of maintenance and repair to the approved landform (i.e. good housekeeping) and do not therefore amount to “development” requiring planning permission.
To date it has not been considered that there is a clear breach of planning control requiring action by the local planning authority in the public interest. However, the matter will be kept under review and I expect to have a further site meeting in the next month or so.
If you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Regards
John Baylay
Principal Planning Officer”
So basically from Sandwell council there, we have a continuation of the same extensions of time, excuses and apathy of what exactly was going on there as they showed throughout the 1990’s and 2000’s.
If this was about “good house keeping”- then why did Sandwell council repair the damaged fence belonging to John Hurst, (a licence condition and also legal requirement), and not them for him?
Why do motor bikes continue to be an issue at the site- some 7 years after this query to the council?
Large amounts of metal were recovered from this site, and it is quite clear that these were taken away, no doubt to weigh them in for quite a mint. But why were they allowed to be dumped there in the first place with the foundry sand during the supposed period of licensing?
Fast Forward to 2017 and all that appears to remain behind of Mintworth’s presence at the site is a skip and a curious sandwich cabin. A yellow digger that had been there for years after these tatting operations from earlier in the decade apparently according to local residents was removed off site from Gladstone Drive just a couple of weeks ago- remarkably timed to coincide with the start of the ludicrous Sandwell council “consultation” for the “Dudley Port Supplementary planning document.”
Conspiracy or coincidence- you decide- but here’s a reminder of that digger and what it was used for at the site, and hopefully it will not be coming back any time soon, whilst at the same time informing new residents of Gladstone Drive as well as Law Close as to what it was doing there in the first place.
Hardly the vegan grindhouse!
One wonders how anyone at this site ever had a clean pair of hands to start with.