Recycling drive blamed for rubbish shortage as landfill site near Dudley granted five-year extension
A Black Country landfill site originally due to have closed in 2015 has been granted an extra five years due to a shortage of rubbish.
Enovert, which operates the Himley Quarry and Landfill site in Oak Lane, Kingswinford, applied to Dudley Council for planning permission to continue operating until the end of 2030.
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The company says the volume of waste being delivered to the site has declined since 2019, with the likely cause being a drive to recycling.
Landfill operations first began at the former quarry and clay mine in 2000, on condition that they finished in 2015 and the site was restored as green space. In 2015 the council agreed to extend this by an extra three years, until December 2018, and this was later extended again on the basis that landfill operations would finish on December 31, 2025.
But the operator says the changing nature of the waste sent to landfill has meant it has been unable to complete its word, and has asked for a further five years.
The company said in a statement to planners: "Additional time is required due to changes in the composition of the waste received at the site, meaning the approved waste contours have taken longer to achieve than anticipated at the time of the previous planning application in 2018.
"This has had the impact of delaying the permanent capping of the full site; in addition, there has been significantly less restoration soils delivered to the site than was anticipated at the time of the 2018 application."
This meant the approved capping and restoration work could not be completed within the timescale laid down in the planning application, the applicant said.
The report said that at the time of the 2018 planning application, there remained approximately 20 million cu ft of void remaining to achieve the approved landfill contours and restoration of the site, and it was anticipated that approximately 90,000–100,000 tons of waste would be delivered to the site each year, filling the gap at a rate of 2.9 million cu ft per year.
But the latest survey of the site, takin September 2025, revealed that approximately 3.92 million cu ft would be needed to restore the site.
It said that while an average of 91,500 tons of waste had been brought to the site each year, in line with expectations, the waste itself had become more dense since 2019, meaning that it did not fill up enough space.
It said the reason for this was that the site now accepted a higher proportion of industrial, non-recyclable waste.
"This is likely to be as a result of initiatives to reduce residual waste going to landfill, and the treatment of waste-streams higher up the waste hierarchy, with the result being that the volume of waste being delivered to the site is less than anticipated in 2018, the operator said.
"This has meant that in order to achieve the approved landfill contours it has taken more time, meaning it has not been possible to complete the capping of the site as programmed, delaying the ability to restore those completed areas with the required volume of soils.
"This has further been compounded by the lack of suitable and available restoration soils available to the site due to significant competition for these materials in the local area."
Clay mining ended at the site in 2017.
The Environment Agency, the council's environmental health team and its highways department were all consulted, and said they had no objections.
Dudley Council planners agreed to extend the deadline for reinstating the site
