Legal challenge launched to Labour council’s approval of Veolia site processing huge quantities of chemicals that caused one of biggest non-nuclear explosions in history – in the heart of a residential area

Residents of Garston and Cressington in the south of Liverpool have begun the formal legal process to overturn the decision by the city’s Labour council to approve a site that will process more than double the quantity of a mix of dangerous chemicals that caused the 1974 Flixborough disaster, one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in human history, with a blast radius of over three miles that killed twenty-eight people in a rural area.

Despite the Flixborough inquiry’s conclusions that the chemical should not be processed near residential areas, the council’s planning committee did not even discuss the risk of explosion before approving the construction of the site, only 200m from the nearest school and nearby housing estates. In light of the much larger quantities ultimately to be processed at the site, the potential blast radius could reach almost to the city centre six miles away. The planning committee was also told that there was no need an outside assessment of the dangers of the site, because its officers were the ‘independent’ investigators and had assessed Veolia’s reports.

After raising an initial legal fighting fund, lawyers acting for the residents have sent a formal ‘letter before action’ to Liverpool City Council, challenging the Council’s decision to grant permission for Veolia to construct two additional fractionation towers used for distilling and processing the chemical waste on King Street (planning ref. 23F/0408).

The letter challenges the decision on the basis that the planning application was deliberately split from an earlier application for two identical towers on site. If the developments, which will be built and used simulataneously, are properly considered together they meet the threshold for being a ‘Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project’. This designation would mean that development consent should have been required from the Secretary of State, rather than a pliant local council known to have diverted emails from residents about the development away from their intended recipients.

The letter argues that any construction which takes place without that development consent will be in breach of the law and could therefore be ordered to be demolished by the Council. Finally, the letter argues that the environmental impact assessment which was supportive of the development the site did not properly consider the cumulative effect of both applications. The letter requests that the Council responds to the challenge by 22 February after which the action group may consider lodging proceedings to ask the court to review the decision.

Donations can be made to the residents’ legal fighting fund here.

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