WITHYHEDGE: Landfill overfilled by six metres gets its permit rewritten to fit

Withyhedge Landfill, blamed for months of stink across north Pembrokeshire, has been handed a new permit that writes its past overfilling into the rules.

Natural Resources Wales approved the variation on Thursday. The regulator’s own decision document shows the site at Rudbaxton, near Haverfordwest, had been filled up to six metres higher than the approved profile along its northern edge, an estimated 406,500 cubic metres of extra waste.

The new permit raises the total volume of waste allowed on the site from 6,596,560 to 6,916,867 cubic metres. NRW says the extra 320,307 cubic metres “accounts for some of the overfill identified” and “is not a request for additional future waste capacity”.

Worst-performing site in Wales for two years running

The decision document is blunt about the operator’s record. NRW says warning letters and enforcement notices over odour and other pollution left Withyhedge “ranked as the worst-performing permitted installation in Wales in both 2023 and 2024”, with further investigations into compliance still running.

Operator Resources Management UK Ltd told NRW it had no relevant convictions. After consultation responses challenged that, the regulator asked it to look again. RML filed an updated declaration, and NRW says that while the company itself has no convictions, “relevant persons associated with the applicant have convictions that are relevant”.

NRW says none of that merited refusal. It weighed the poor record against the operator’s cooperation, including shutting the site voluntarily between May 2024 and January 2025 for improvement works and “heavily investing in the site’s infrastructure”.

Nicholas Bettinson, NRW’s permitting service manager, said: “We recognise the impact previous odour issues had on local communities and understand why people feel strongly. Our role is to regulate in line with the law. Where an application meets the required standards, we are obliged to issue the permit.”

He said the approved variation “has secured stronger regulatory controls and enhanced environmental protection measures at the site”. NRW says its investigation into permit breaches continues separately.

What changes on the ground

Beyond the levels, the permit lets RML bring in up to 50,000 tonnes a year of soil and stone classed as recovered waste, to build landfill cells and restore the site. NRW says it is satisfied that counts as recovery rather than disposal.

The operator has six months to rewrite its environmental management system, including its odour, landfill gas and leachate plans, and submit it to NRW for approval. Leachate is the liquid that drains through buried waste. Monitoring of groundwater, surface water and landfill gas has also been revised.

The site also keeps its permission to take up to 5,000 tonnes of asbestos waste a year in a dedicated cell, something residents told NRW the application had not made clear. NRW says that was already allowed and the variation does not change it, but the operator must now meet strengthened conditions, including a year of dust monitoring along the site boundary, before any asbestos cell is built.

NRW says none of the approved changes should increase odour or noise, though it acknowledges noise complaints came in while the application was being decided. Public Health Wales told the regulator it foresaw “no adverse risks to public health” from the variation.

240 objections, a school and the council

Forty-six people responded to the first consultation, including the Stop the Stink campaign group. When NRW published its draft decision, 240 more wrote in.

Governors of Spittal Church in Wales School told NRW the odour between late 2023 and June 2024 had hit outdoor learning, pupils’ wellbeing and the school’s reputation. They asked for the monitoring equipment installed at the school to stay long term. NRW says off-site monitoring “does not form part of the environmental permit”.

Pembrokeshire County Council objected that the new levels conflict with the contours approved under planning permission, “creating a situation that is not capable of lawful compliance”. The council also told NRW the operator needs to apply for fresh planning permission. NRW’s reply: that is not relevant to its decision.

NRW says planning and permitting are separate systems, that it has a legal duty to grant a variation that meets the rules, and that waiting for a planning decision would have left it open to an appeal for non-decision.

Complaints about lorry traffic, tourism and the visual impact of the site were ruled outside the scope of the permit.

‘Actions, not words’

Paul Davies, Welsh Conservative Member of the Senedd for Ceredigion Penfro, said: “After everything communities surrounding Withyhedge have already endured, words about stronger controls will not be enough.”

He said: “Residents have lived with unacceptable odours, disruption and months of uncertainty. They have attended meetings, submitted evidence, responded to consultations and repeatedly raised concerns about what has been happening at this site. They now deserve more than assurances.”

He went on: “NRW has made the decision to approve this variation and it must therefore demonstrate that the tougher controls it describes are rigorously monitored and enforced. There can be no return to the situation local communities experienced previously and no tolerance of further breaches of environmental regulations.”

He said he would be “pressing for that investigation to be concluded thoroughly and transparently, and for appropriate action to follow where breaches are established”, adding: “The burden is now on NRW and the operator to rebuild the confidence of local communities, and that will be achieved through actions, not words.”

What the operator says

RML, part of the Dauson Environmental Group since March 2022, says it closed the site temporarily in May 2024 for engineering works and reopened in January 2025. The company says it has spent more than £10m on the site since the closure.

It says that since reopening “no confirmed off-site odour” has been linked to the landfill during routine regulatory inspections, and points to a July 2024 NRW compliance statement in support.

That sits awkwardly beside the regulator’s own count. Figures NRW gave the Pembrokeshire Herald show 211 odour complaints about the site between January and September this year, and the decision document records noise complaints received while the variation was being decided.

RML says the site is permitted to take 250,000 tonnes of waste a year, operates from 7am to 5pm five days a week, and takes waste from along the M4 corridor including Pembrokeshire. It expects the landfill to run for another 10 to 15 years.

The company says it has paid for AQMesh air quality monitors around the site since August 2024, funds the council’s independent monitoring and runs a community fund.

The decision comes weeks after NRW lifted its suspension on the AMG Resources site in Llanelli, blamed for the summer’s fly plague. Councillors there have since launched a petition to move or shut that site.