CONTROVERSIAL plans for a new power plant in Hampshire have been dropped in the face of opposition from the public.

Peak Gen Power has withdrawn its proposal to build a diesel power generator in Southampton docks on land at Millbrook Wastewater Treatment Plant.

The new plant was to have been a fifth of the size of the previously-planned £300 million wood-fuelled biomass power station, scrapped by developers Helius 18 months ago following widespread public outcry against a design that would have towered over neighbouring homes.

Peak Gen’s plant would have been a back-up generator to be used in times of energy shortage and it was expected that it would only have been in use for 110 hours per year.

Mike Denness, pictured left, Millbrook ward councillor and head of Southampton City Council’s planning committee, said: “I called it into the planning committee as I had concerns about air quality and noise.

The power generating equipment would have occupied a compound measuring 45m by 30m – 14 per cent of the Southern Water site.

“I spent a lot of time talking about this to local residents and I’m delighted this application has now been withdrawn.

“However, I will keep a watching brief in case an application is resubmitted in the future.”

“This is great for the area and local residents. We are blighted by a lot of noise from the docks and air quality is something we are working hard to resolve.”

As previously reported, Southampton has been named as one of the worst five cities in the UK outside London for air quality after it failed pollution tests for two types of particulates – including the toxic gas nitrogen dioxide.

Liz Batten, one of the founders of Clean Air Southampton, said: “This application was the result of the government putting out £165 million in subsidies. This generator was one of many, in case we were close to power outage.

“There are plans for a similar generator at Fawley and the pollutants from that will come to Southampton on south-westerly winds.”

She said the government should spend more time and money on promoting energy conservation rather than building new power stations.

Former Millbrook Conservative councillor Steve Galton, pictured right, co-founder of the No Southampton Biomass group, also said the power plant would have been in the wrong locationnot needed.

“Millbrook is the wrong location. We already have issue with lorries and air and noise pollution. We should say no to any development that is going to make pollution worse and isn’t a requirement for the docks to function.”

Millbrook Labour councillor David Furnell added: “I am pleased that it has been withdrawn. If it had come back to the planning committee I would have spoken out against it. I prepared a speech to oppose it but fortunately it was withdrawn. We need to make sure we get jobs but we need to take into account that people want clean air to breathe”.

Chris Hinds, spokesman for the Western Docks Consultation Forum said: “I originally objected to it, as the area is highly polluted already and it seemed illogical to add to it.”

Andrew Pope, independent councillor for Redbridge said: “I’m very pleased that the application is withdrawn. If it wasn’t for the Echo I wouldn’t have known about it as the council didn’t tell me. They said it wasn’t in my ward.”

The energy company Peak Gen Power said in a satement: “We are confident that the output from the generator compound would not impact negatively on the local community and would assert that this confidence is supported by the independent Air Quality Assessment 1 and Acoustic Design Assessment 2.

“However, we would not want to move forward with a project which may cause discord with elements of the local community.”

The Echo asked leader of Southampton City Council Simon Letts if Southampton was likely to become a no-go zone for major industrial schemes if they continued to be met with such opposition from residents and councillors.

“There is always that risk but we have a good record of supporting employment proposals – for example, the Ford site which has a potential to create 1000 jobs, ” said Cllr Letts.