Swindon council launches inquiry into recycling fire
Swindon Borough Council is calling on residents and businesses impacted by last year’s fire at Averies Recycling (Swindon) Ltd (ARSL) to submit details of their experience to a council inquiry so that ‘lessons can be learned for the future’.
The fire, which burned for two months at ARSL’s Marshgate site last summer, involved around 1,000 tonnes of general and business waste and cost an estimated £500,000 to tackle.
Smoke from the blaze could reportedly be seen for several weeks in August, with local residents often being advised to close windows and doors over the course of the summer as a precaution.
The length for which the fire burned has been partly blamed on the failure of ARSL to remove 3,000 tonnes of smouldering waste from the site on Marshgate Road. As such, the Environment Agency (EA) had to eventually remove the waste to allow firefighters to access the seat of the fire. (Although ARSL entered administration in January 2015, the EA has said it will “continue to pursue” the Averies family (who own the land) to recover the costs of clearing waste from the site.)
The council is now calling on those affected by the fire to detail their experiences at a feedback event on Tuesday, 26 May in the Council Chamber at the Civic Offices on Euclid Street.
The meeting, which is being organised by a task group established by Swindon Borough Council’s Scrutiny Committee and the Local Resilience Forum’s independent multi-agency debrief, will start at 6 p.m.
Information gathered from this meeting, and from meetings held with the agencies involved in the incident (such as Wiltshire Fire & Rescue Service, Wiltshire Police, the EA, and Public Health England) will be collated into a report in the hopes of identifying any actions that could be taken to avoid such situations in the future.
‘All the feedback will be used to help our investigation’
Councillor Maureen Penny, chair of the task group, said: “This is an opportunity for anyone who was directly affected by the fire, as either a resident or business, to share their experiences and views.
“We want to examine and review the situation and its impact as thoroughly as possible so we can establish what worked well and what could have been done differently, so we can learn for the future.”
Penny added, however, that due to the “ongoing nature of the review”, the task group “won’t be in a position to answer individual questions at this meeting”.
She continued: “All the feedback will be used to help our investigation and inform any subsequent recommendations.
“I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone in advance for sparing their time to attend.”
Find out more about the ARSL fire. 
