Bromsgrove District Council served a temporary stop notice on lorry activity at Marlbrook Tip – just one hour before the latest, long-awaited meeting in the tip saga was due to begin.
Neither the council nor the Environment Agency, which assumed responsibility for the site in 2014 under the Reservoirs Act, could explain why the action had only been taken that morning instead of months earlier when residents reported that lorry movements had started afresh.
The meeting was a fractious affair, with “long-suffering” residents berating both agencies for their inaction.
The situation was later discussed by Lickey & Blackwell Parish Council, whose clerk, Lisa Winterbourn, reported that Bromsgrove had been “very defensive and on the back foot.”
Coun Jill Harvey said, “It’s like Groundhog Day – it’s unbelievable that nobody is monitoring this. The EA is so secretive, and they are all blaming each other instead of talking properly.
“The tip owners did miserably on self-monitoring last time; how can we allow them to do it again?”
Resident Roy Hughes added that “Bromsgrove wouldn’t accept that we were right and they were wrong.”
Click here for a full report from the tip working group meeting.