ENVIRONMENT Agency officials will be pressured to take any necessary action to close down Averies Recycling’s Marshgate depot after the eight-week fire which put the town under a cloud of smoke.

At a full council meeting on Thursday, a motion to investigate all avenues which might enable the depot to be closed was passed unanimously.

Coun David Renard (Con, Haydon Wick), the council leader, will now turn put pressure on the Environment Agency (EA) in the hope it can shut Averies’ site down.

“The Environment Agency have the legal responsibility for the monitoring of them,” said Coun Renard.

“We can put pressure on them to say, if they’re in Swindon, we want them to use the full extent of their powers to manage them properly.

“We have no legal role in this other than to apply pressure. I don’t think we can do much more than that.

“One of the bigger things is the regulation of the operators. It’s all very well to look at strategy, but if the operator had been running the facility in the way they were licensed to run it, then potentially we wouldn’t have this problem.

“We need to look nationally at how these facilities are licensed, the locations they are licensed in and how they’re managed once they have been given a licence.

“There’s also no obligation on operators to have insurance to cover the cost when this type of thing happens.”

The leader, along with the director of law and democratic services and the town’s two MPs, were also backed by councillors to examine all means to allow the council to assume regulatory function of such sites in the future.

The Labour group was also keen for the Local Resilience Forum’s investigation of the saga to be made public, and backed an amendment to the Conservative motion which will bring the investigation before Scrutiny Committee.

The multi-agency debrief is expected to conclude in early November, when Scrutiny will have the opportunity to call witnesses for questioning.

Coun Mark Dempsey (Lab, Walcot & Park North) said: “Various people within the council have given me the assurance that this will enable us to have the inquiry we want to have.

“We want to understand why they (EA) didn’t intervene earlier, we want to hear from the council as to why they decided the park and ride was the least worst option, and what lessons the fire service has learned to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Bernie Brannan, who chaired the group which co-ordinated the response to the fire, said: “There will be a full debrief looking at our response to the incident so this is assessed and we can learn lessons and also share best practice, as appropriate.

“The multi-agency debrief will be an independent process, with an external facilitator via the Local Resilience Forum, and is anticipated to start next month.

A spokeswoman for EA said: “An enforcement notice served by the Environment Agency remains in place because the infrastructure on site (the drainage and impermeable surfacing) is not compliant with the permit conditions.

“The permit does not allow waste to be stored, treated or handled in areas of the site which have not been constructed and maintained in accordance with the permit.

“The notice prohibits the acceptance and treatment of waste until the infrastructure is brought up to standard.

“We have also served notices under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2010 to prevent pollution and ensure compliance with the permit.

“We are currently investigating whether any offences have been committed.”

Averies did not comment on the meeting.