New deal offered to get waste plan going (From Witney Gazette)
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New deal offered to get waste plan going
5:00pm Friday 8th February 2013 in News
By Tom Jennings, covering Witney and West Oxfordshire. Call me on 01865 425403
Mike Tysoe
A FRESH offer has been proposed on a previously stalled deal to build a new recycling centre in West Oxfordshire.
West Oxfordshire District Council hopes to build the £190,000 centre at its former Greystones depot, off the A361, south of Chipping Norton.
But for the project to go ahead it needs a strip of land, owned by Chipping Norton Town Council, to create improved access to the site.
The plan was deadlocked after both councils put their “final offer” on the table and could not agree on a deal.
But the district council put a new, currently undisclosed, offer to the town council at a meeting on Monday, just days after it appeared all negotiations had foundered.
The offer will be discussed by town councillors at a closed full council meeting on Monday, February 18.
Chipping Norton's deputy mayor Mike Tysoe said: “We have agreed to place in front of our mutual councils an outline deal.”
He said the new offer was an improvement on the previous district council offer, but refused to comment further.
Simon Hoare, the district council's cabinet member for finance, was unavailable for comment yesterday.
The district council had offered to buy the land for £10,000, pay up to £6,000 in expenses spent by the town council on an adviser, and hand over a strip of land next to the town council’s youth centre at no cost.
The town council’s final offer had been to lease the Greystones land to the district council for £5,000 a year – index-linked to Greystone’s turnover – with a rent-free period of two years.
It had questioned the benefit of the recycling centre to Chipping Norton, saying it could lead to increased traffic and problems with fly-tipping.
Both offers had been rejected by the other party.
The district council stepped in to create the recycling centre, for householders to use, after Oxfordshire County Council closed its Dean Pit site, near Chadlington, in 2011.
