WORK has started on a £2million development to create a new waste and recycling centre for Pembrokeshire.

The Crane Cross Civic Amenity and Recycling Centre, near Saundersfoot, will provide a waste management facility for the collection and segregation of municipal waste serving the south east of the county.

The construction is expected to take seven months to complete.

The facility is part of the South West Wales Materials Efficiency project, which is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh Government.

“This facility is long overdue,” said Councillor Huw George, cabinet member for environmental and regulatory services.

“As a local authority, we face tough recycling targets in the future and this new facility will help us meet them - as well as provide local residents with a state-of-the-art waste and recycling centre.”

Sited off Devonshire Drive, the layout of the new development has been based on the award-winning civic amenity site at Waterloo, Pembroke Dock. The council said that its design would be 'sympathetic to the agricultural environment of the area'.

The buildings will be covered in dark green corrugated cladding, with external lighting being sensitively sited and the whole development screened with tree planting and vegetation.

It has been designed by Capita Property and Infrastructure Limited, while construction will be carried out by local contractor G D Harries.

The council recently approved its application for the plan, subject to 18 conditions, including traffic calming along the A478. This is likely to include extending the local 50mph speed limit and improving the signage at the junction with Devonshire Drive at Crane Cross.

Last year, the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority turned down the council's plans for its preferred site a short distance away, alongside the A478 road and next door to Brooklands Nursing Home. The rejection followed a year-long campaign by the home and its supporters against the use of the site.

It is proposed that the new site - which will replace the Salterns site in Tenby - be open to the public from 8am to 6pm every day from April 1 to September 30, and from 8am to 4pm between October 1 and March 31.