CAN YOU SPOT WHERE YOUR HOUSE WAS BUILT?
How it started……
How it’s going
The area bordering three sections of canal and The Tipton and Dudley Road was once an agricultural marsh land punctuated only by The Rattlechain brickworks. When the crooked conman Sydney Sheldon then progressively started to sell off pieces of this land for use as tips it became a free for all and often illegal bonanza for fly by night tatter and tipper scum to soil.
Anyone researching the history of The Temple Way estate as I have can see from the former “what’s in your backyard ” image from the environment agency website as to the scale of landfill operations that took place. Tips on top of tips, waste materials spread, picked up then spread again over layers of foundry sand and scooped up by machinery and then “landscaped” like a mong with a maulstick would and blended into a grandiose phoney “reclamation” painting of dubious fakery.
Unfortunately, as I have already briefed, the EA have removed much of the information as to what’s in your backyard, to the point where this deliberate obfuscation is obviously aimed at allowing the construction/ housing development industry a free pass to make up lies about the former use of land and what was buried there, or to not go into the finer detail of what may be found there lurking beneath.
Under The Town and Country Planning (General Development Procedure) Order 1995, Local Planning Authorities may consult with the Environment Agency about all applications they receive to develop land within 250 metres of landfill sites.
Thankfully websites like this one have preserved the missing information and retrieved it before it was totally shredded from view. The annotated numbers on the names of historic landfill tips correspond to the licence numbers they were given, and so here are links on this website which you can view to see what was tipped there during the life of these licences. Some of course predated site licensing, so anything went, including hazardous wastes and this should be further caveated in that this was a time when bribing corrupt officials to look the other way was rife.
Much of this landscape was soiled by The Hurst family and their operations as either foundry sand dumpers in their own right- Birlee Industrial and Mintworth et al, as well as contractors for the disgusting Duport Group. Their fingerprints and provenance are all over this canvas, so don’t let anyone fool you into thinking otherwise, as it can be proven.
Going clockwise but also chronologically to explain further tips on tips. I think it is fair to say that this painting would not win the Turner prize for either fine art or abstract but maybe The Booker prize for what certain “environmental consultants” have written about the tips ever since to disguise what was dumped there!
Of course, the former Tividale sewage works were a shit tip in their own right, described as “a crap site for residential” by a senior planner at Sandwell council.
ROSE LANE BIRLEE INDUSTRIAL LIMITED SL303
ROSE LANE BIRLEE INDUSTRIAL LIMITED SL113
A POINT OF ORDER CONCERNING “BROWNFIELD LAND”
Sandwell council made a false statement within their recent highly dubious press release written as though on behalf of the scum from The Mill and DSM demolition. The first ten words of their statement are a fundamental misunderstanding of Government policy and terms of reference, but it perhaps comes as no surprise as we have seen as to how the buffoons in planning policy could not even identify one of their own SINC/NATURE RESERVE SITES AS SUCH in a planning application.
“Rattlechain Tip in Tividale Oldbury is a privately owned brownfield site……”
“Brownfield land” or land defined as “previously developed land” has a specific meaning as defined by The National Planning Policy Framework- the published guidance dealing with planning issues and how arguments about suitability for use etc are decided. You can see a screenshot of the link below.
National Planning Policy Framework – Annex 2: Glossary – Guidance – GOV.UK
This confirms that “brownfield land” EXCLUDES “LAND THAT HAS BEEN DEVELOPED FOR MINERALS EXTRACTION OR WASTE DISPOSAL BY LANDFILL WHERE PROVISION FOR RESTORATION HAS BEEN MADE THROUGH THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS”.
The lagoon , a still hazardous waste site under permit was a quarry site for the extraction of Etruria marl for brick making, as was Sheldon’s original pit that became the main hole for the Duport’s Tip. After that, the entire picture above including the former “rattlechain Tip” the council name it as confirms that this land is entirely excluded from the definition of “brownfield land” because ALL OF IT HAS BEEN USED FOR WASTE DISPOSAL LANDFILL, ALSO HAVING “RESTORATION” IN THE FORM OF PLANNING CONDITIONS- IRONICALLY LIKE PLANTING TREES. IT HAS ALSO “LAND THAT WAS PREVIOUSLY DEVELOPED , BUT WHERE THE REMAINS OF THE PERMANENT STRUCTURE (BRICKWORKS AND PITS) HAVE BLENDED INTO THE LANDSCPAE IN THE PROCESS OF TIME.”
Furthermore, in planning terms, as set out in the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development)(England) Order 2015 and previous legislation, quarries are defined as ‘sui generis’. In simple terms this means that they do not fall in any defined use class including those that cover industry. Therefore, in law, the land was not previously industrial land.
THE ALTERNATIVE PAINTING
A pleasant alternative to the use of these tips for residential use was Sheepwash of course. If only that early 1980’s vision could be rekindled by politicians with ambitious interests in nature and wildlife. A place where “happy little trees” grow without fear of being axed.
