COUNCILLORS have hailed a site in York’s green belt as “ideal” for a waste recycling factory.

Members of City of York Council’s planning committee were backing Yorwaste’s scheme for land next to Harewood Whin landfill site at Rufforth, which also involves a waste transfer station.

Villagers demonstrated against the dual project during a site visit by councillors earlier this week, complaining that too many developments were being proposed in the green belt and claiming that the plant would mean even more heavy lorries passing through their village.

Representatives, such as local councillor Chris Steward, told the committee that the site was “totally inappropriate” and said the Harewood Whin landfill had been in existence for much longer than allowed under the original planning permission.

But Cllr Tracey Simpson-Laing said of the recycling plant: “It’s an ideal site in the ownership of the applicant. It’s a sensible site.”

Cllr John Galvin said it was a difficult decision but he would support it, adding that the site was a “particularly unlovely bit of land”.

Cllr Mark Warters called for a deferral to see if highways could agree to a condition enforcing changes to the entrance, making it difficult for lorries to turn right out of the site and in to Rufforth, but this was defeated on a vote.

The application will now be referred to the Secretary of State, who could call it in for an inquiry. If not called in, it will be deferred pending satisfactory completion of a legal agreement securing a series of measures to reduce the impact.

A spokesman for Yorwaste said he was pleased by the decision. and said: “By providing these two new facilities, we will be supporting City of York Council and other municipal and commercial organisations within the York area, and along the A19 and A64 corridors, to meet their environmental responsibilities through landfill diversion and more recycling and recovery of waste.”

He added that both facilities would play an important role in the delivery of waste to the new incinerator at Allerton Park, which when operational in 2018 would reduce the amount of waste going to landfill by at least 90 per cent and increase recycling in the region.