I understand that a Planning Application is being held at Colegate to extend Cantley factory and open it all year round. The ref is BA2008 0307 FUL and it's being dealt with by a man called Andrew Fillmore. The plan is to deliver raw material to Yarmouth outer harbour and deliver it by road to Cantley.

I understand that Cantley factory was started in 1912 and building finished after the First World War - with Dutch funding - so it been there a long time. It would never get Planning Consent today! It's already visually intrusive to a ridiculous degree and can be seen from Hales, Repps with Bastwick and the eastern end of Breydon Water. However, we've all lived with it - mainly because it doesn't operate when the majority of river usage is in progress. Depending on wind direction, the smell travels as far as Wroxham Broad, Great Yarmouth and Oulton.

It's entirely unacceptable to open this factory all year round, individuals won't enjoy it and it could easily place a kiss of death on the fragile Yare tourism industry.

Worse! Neither Great Yarmouth nor the roads to Cantley need large numbers of artics thundering through - driving anywhere near Cantley is dangerous enough at the moment during the sugar beet season. Access should be by water from Great Yarmouth. Use (and maintain) the River Yare.

A thoroughly ill-considered application. Rumour has it you have till the 27th October to register an objection.

President OF

The good people of Bury St Edmunds and the surrounding area have to tolerate the stench from a huge festering lagoon, the heavy odour of sugar beet pulp processing and an almost constant steam cloud over their neighbourhood. A early morning walk through the low-level town or surrounding countryside is a stomach-churning experience, particularly in the Winter.

Bury factory isn't open all-year, yet the pong from the lagoon certainly is. Some years ago local pressure resulted in the installation of an atomising spray system with stink killing jets mounted around the lagoon fringe, but it costs money to operate so it isn't used much.

The sky high silos and the ever steaming chimneys form an interesting backdrop to the "Welcome to Historic Bury St Edmunds" signs, but the factory is conveniently close to the crossing of the East-West and the North-South routes so would-be tourists are able to escape virtually unscathed. Off they go to spend their holiday savings somewhere more aesthetically inviting. Fettfudd or Bwaintwee perhaps?

Ironically, the long-suffering locals of St Edmundsbury are still confronted by supermarket shelves stacked high with imported cane sugar. Rarely is there a trace of the local beet product to be found. Don't let anyone tell you that the Cantley upgrade will be worthwhile, because it's unlikely to benefit its own back yard more than the creation of a handful of badly paid jobs.

BT

GaryCantley wrote:

Peter,



I will give a better answer in a while, Im currently in the middle of writing my objection letter!!

Wouldn't it be quicker to puck up the 'phone and swear at them?

Poppy wrote:

GaryCantley wrote:

Peter,



I will give a better answer in a while, Im currently in the middle of writing my objection letter!!

Wouldn't it be quicker to puck up the 'phone and swear at them?

Why would I want to do that?

Old Frank wrote:

I understand that a Planning Application is being held at Colegate to extend Cantley factory and open it all year round. The ref is BA2008 0307 FUL and it's being dealt with by a man called Andrew Fillmore. The plan is to deliver raw material to Yarmouth outer harbour and deliver it by road to Cantley.

I understand that Cantley factory was started in 1912 and building finished after the First World War - with Dutch funding - so it been there a long time. It would never get Planning Consent today! It's already visually intrusive to a ridiculous degree and can be seen from Hales, Repps with Bastwick and the eastern end of Breydon Water. However, we've all lived with it - mainly because it doesn't operate when the majority of river usage is in progress. Depending on wind direction, the smell travels as far as Wroxham Broad, Great Yarmouth and Oulton.

It's entirely unacceptable to open this factory all year round, individuals won't enjoy it and it could easily place a kiss of death on the fragile Yare tourism industry.

Worse! Neither Great Yarmouth nor the roads to Cantley need large numbers of artics thundering through - driving anywhere near Cantley is dangerous enough at the moment during the sugar beet season. Access should be by water from Great Yarmouth. Use (and maintain) the River Yare.

A thoroughly ill-considered application. Rumour has it you have till the 27th October to register an objection.

President OF

OF,

If I may try to answer some of your points, and I am probably wrong with some of my assumptions!!

As I understand it, from reading through most of the paperwork associated with this application, there will be no steam from the big chimney so, apart from probably some noise (dont know how much, if any), most people wont know the factory is working.

Transporting the cane from the outer harbour to Cantley is probably where this application will come unstuck. The figures in the documents show that the B1140/A47 junction has room for extra traffic. An extra 98 HGV's turning right onto the A47 from Cantley. Only one wagon can sit in the middle of the carriageway at one time. 98 per day works out at one every 5 and a half minutes. I travel through that junction at least twice a day and the delay can be anything from 0 seconds to 10 minutes. As we know, delays cause frustration and frustration leads to accidents happening.

The papers also correctly record the A47 "at this point" as a dual carriageway, it fails to point out that within 500 yards it is single carriageway and that the HGV's would use the Acle Straight, at a maximum of 40mph. What happens on the days when the straight is closed for various reasons? The alternative? Through GY to Caister and then into Cantley through Filby, Fleggburgh and Acle. This road definitely isnt upto standard for this volume of traffic.

Dont forget that the survey was taken at the start of June on a Wednesday. Why not conduct the survey in August, when the A47 is full of tourists, caravans, businessmen and hauliers. They probably did do a survey then but didnt like the results.

Why cant the river be used to transport the cane to/from the factory? Yes it would require dredging but I believe it would be a much more economical way to transport the goods. They could be craned from one ship to another in the outer harbour and brought straight up the river.

Here is an excerpt from one of the documents accompanying the application.

Consideration has been given by British Sugar to the possible use of
rail or river transport links between Great Yarmouth and Cantley, as
an alternative to road haulage, given the obvious proximity of both
the Yarmouth to Norwich railway line and the River Yare to the
Factory. However, due to the current lack of rail head and river
loading/unloading installations, allied to the major technical and
economic challenges of creating suitable facilities, these options have
been discounted at this stage as being unfeasible.
British Sugar will continue to monitor the situation in the future to see
whether viable opportunities arise for altering their approach to the
importation of Raw Sugar to the Factory by other sustainable
methods of transport.

EDIT: The closing date for objections is the 23rd October 2008

The outer harbour doesn't have a rail link ... any more. Vauxhall Bridge was the route across the Bure for the railway that once took the fish to market. Great Yarmouth Borough spent over a £million taking the railway out of South Quay, when the smartened the area up not long ago. Shame they didn't dofor Vauxhall bridge whilst they were at it. Of course, that was before they discovered South Quay isn't strong enough to take the lorries from the almost completed Outer Harbour. Good Planning? Don't bother coming to Yarmouth - the traffic isn't moving at all whilst the road is being strengthened. Caister Road to Haven bridge took an hour and twenty minutes last Friday. That's another million pounds of public investment - Norfolk County Council this time - still it'll probably be more use than on deposit with Icelandic banks.

Yarmouth can't really cope with the additional HGV traffic either. Ah yes; they hope that we'll all build them a new bridge one day. The bridge is going to cost more than the harbour.

The whole development is a shining example of myopic planning.
The outer harbour should have been built at Hopton - where there's already access off a dual carriageway and a disused rail link ... in that location, it might even have helped Yarmouth & Lowestoft develop together a little more.

Fools and horses build a distribution centre on the end of a sand spit with access through a mediaeval town. Given the likely cost of the bridge it would still be cheaper to abandon the Outer Harbour structure to date and build a another at Hopton -rather than construct the gold-plated bridge. That's got that off my chest!

I understand that British Sugar think the traffic is the weakest part of their application. I can't help feeling sorry for (for example) the individuals that have invested in the pub, Cantley Red House/Reedcutters. No-ones going to want to moor and sleep beside a whirring factory. OF

Just in case any one wanted a reminder of this broadland veiw.

Can't help but feel that a Planning/Highways option might to insist the new product is delivered by barge from Yarmouth and try a Section 106 on some required dredging.