Labour have promised to get answers from the Environment Agency and Walleys Quarry – if they win the next general election.

Shadow Environment Secretary Steve Reed was at Walleys Quarry, in Silverdale, yesterday to hold talks with residents and campaigners.

He said: "It was important to go to the site itself and smell it because it absolutely stinks and it was making me feel nauseous just being there and the fact that people living in Newcastle-under-Lyme have had to put up with that for years is shocking to me, really shocking. But just now meeting the Stop the Stink campaign group they're just ordinary concerned residents who live in the area that don't believe they should have to put up with this and they're absolutely right.

"Yet the government has done nothing about it, the Environment Agency has let them down, and they are right to ask those questions.

"So I said to them if there's a general election and a change in government and I ended up as the Environment Secretary I will haul the Environment Agency into my office and the operator of this site and I will demand answers as to why they are allowing this to continue for so long and I'll want to know why they have still got a licence to operate despite what they are inflicting on people living in this town."

Walleys Quarry smell complaints have reached a 21-month-high (LDRS).

Recent data shows Walleys Quarry smell complaints have hit a 21-month high. But calls for a public inquiry have been ruled out.

Mr Reed added: "The thing with a public inquiry is that it can take years and years and years and we don't want this to go on for years and years and I want to take action that will be quick. The quickest way is to get the Environment Agency and the operator in my office, find out why these breaches have been allowed to continue without properly being addressed, and find out why the operator has still got a licence because from the sounds of it they shouldn't have and we can perhaps deal with it quicker that way.

"We don't know when the election is going to come so this is going to continue regardless. So I've made a commitment today to these residents that I'll raise this issue with the head of the Environment Agency even before an election; try and find out exactly what's gone wrong that way.

"I'll work with Adam to make sure we get answers to that but they will then know that an incoming Labour government is not just going to sit back and let this toxic stench continue to hang over Newcastle-under-Lyme in the way the Conservative government has."

Newcastle's Labour parliamentary candidate Adam Jogee says Walleys Quarry is one of the biggest issues raised with him right across Newcastle.

He said: "This is something people right across Newcastle-under-Lyme care about, they're worried about, and want to see action on. So for all the warm words and nice words and promises of getting this sorted nothing has changed in the past four years."

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