A SUFFOLK landfill site is set to grow by up to six metres after county chiefs give the nod to a bid to start piling more rubbish at the location, it emerged today.

A SUFFOLK landfill site is set to grow by up to six metres after county chiefs give the nod to a bid to start piling more rubbish at the location, it emerged today.

Viridor Waste Management has been given the all clear to throw more waste on to the Masons Landfill site at Great Blakenham.

A report that went before county planning chiefs on Thursday reveals the “raising of pre-settlement contours” by between two and six metres would generate an additional capacity of 640,000 cubic metres.

In August, The Evening Star revealed that Suffolk County Council is considering piling up landfill sites into huge mountains of waste as a solution to the growing rubbish problem.

A county council spokeswoman said the current application is not land-raising as the additional waste would settle over time.

A shortfall in landfill capacity has already been identified for the period up to 2016 regardless of whether a planned £600million waste incinerator for the county goes ahead.

The annual demand for landfill capacity is estimated at 38,900 tonnes per year of municipal waste and 82,500 tonnes of commercial and industrial waste.

This figure is expected to increase annually from 2014 by 0.7 per cent.

Are you concerned about the lack of landfill capacity in Suffolk? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN or e-mail eveningstarletters@eveningstar.co.uk

A landfill site is an area of land used for the burial of waste under control conditions.

There are currently three main landfill sites in Suffolk:

Foxhall Landfill, Ipswich, Masons Landfill, Great Blakenham and Wangford Landfill, Wangford.