A GOVERNMENT planning inspector has rubbished a scheme to build a controversial waste recycling plant at Ridge.

Planning inspector, Jonathon King, threw out Raymond Brown Eco-Bio Ltd's appeal against a Hampshire regulatory committee's decision to reject the application in 2004.

A public inquiry into the plans was held at Winchester in late February and early March.

The company wanted to site an aggregates crushing machine and recycling plant along Ridge Lane, just off the A3090 Romsey to Ower road.

This attracted widespread opposition from residents living in nearby villages - including East Wellow -subjected to a number of attempts to large gravel extraction schemes on their doorstep.

Welcoming the inspector's decision, Hampshire's Romsey division member Mark Cooper said: "The decision to dismiss the Ridge Quarry planning appeal reaffirms an important point of planning policy. The policy point made is that the planning history of the site is not of itself a reason to grant new planning permissions."

He added: "County officers and local residents should be congratulated for presenting such a convincing case at the inquiry. The development proposed was for the use of land for a permanent facility for the recycling construction and demolition waste.

"But the inspector accepted the view, expressed by local residents, that after many years of living with the quarry, the landfill and ancillary operations, all of which were explicitly temporary and were subject to restoration conditions, they have the reasonable expectation that the site will now be restored to its former condition as agricultural land."

Mr Cooper said he believed the outcome could have an impact on similar planning applications.

"The inspector also confirmed an important policy issue. He says that once mineral workings cease and waste disposal at the site also ceases, the logical behind recycling and that location is no longer there. The site needs more to recommend it than its history. In planning terms it will be very significant if the logic applied to the Ridge site can be applied to other old mineral and disposal sites around Romsey and in Hampshire," concluded Mr Cooper.

Hampshire's Romsey Extra member Roy Perry, whose division covers the Ridge site, was unavailable for comment at the time of going to press but he was opposed to the application.