Celebrity backing for waste site campaign (From Western Telegraph)

Celebrity backing for waste site campaign

1:00pm Sunday 29th July 2012 in County News

A campaign to stop a major waste disposal site being opened within yards of a specialist nursing home in Pembrokeshire is being supported by public figures throughout the UK.

Among them is broadcaster Fiona Phillips, whose parents lived in Pembrokeshire and who both died after suffering Alzheimer’s disease.

Writing in her column in the Daily Mirror this week, Ms Phillips said that Pembrokeshire County Council’s proposals for the site adjacent to the Brooklands Home, near Saundersfoot, said ‘everything about society’s attitude to older people’.

She commented: “Would they put it next to a school? No. A church? No. A supermarket?

No. A housing estate? Of course not.

“So why would they think it’s okay to dump it next door to a building which houses sick people in the later stages of their lives?”

She urged everyone to voice their opinion by signing the home’s online petition, and also enlisted support through Twitter, with MPs, media presenters and celebrities including Russell Grant, Suzanne Dando and Bill Oddie helping to spread the word.

As the Western Telegraph reported last week, land for a new civic amenity and recycling centre for south-east Pembrokeshire has been earmarked alongside the main A478 road near Saundersfoot, in a field adjacent to Brooklands which has 40 elderly, mentally-ill residents from throughout west Wales.

“The location is totally inappropriate,”

said Mike Umanee, who has run the home with his wife, Jay, for 27 years.

The Brooklands Residents Support Group has voiced its ‘shock’ at the plans.

“Brooklands is not just a nursing home, it is the home of our husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters and grandparents,” said a spokesperson.

“We do not believe it should be next to anyone’s home.”

Former doctors, nurses, police officers and business owners are among the current residents of the home.

Because of their illnesses, they are ‘unable to make their own decisions and defend their own rights‘, the relatives state.

And a consultant psychiatrist shares their concern that the disruption, noise and inceased levels of activity likely to be associated with a recycling centre will have an ‘extremely detrimental effect’ on the health of residents at Brooklands.