Aggregate Industries couldn’t believe its luck, no doubt, when its planning application for a 10 million tonne quarry extension within the Tamar Valley AONB was approved by Cornwall Council in September. The application PA16/10746 had been validated the previous November. The approval extends the life of Greystone Quarry near Launceston to 2066 and requires the stopping up of a public highway.
A number of objections to the application had been received, including from the Tamar Valley AONB Management Team and from DCC. Natural England said:
The submitted documents may serve to underplay the impacts on the AONB. We therefore advise that you give full weight to the detailed comments that have been submitted by the Tamar Valley AONB Partnership.
The AONB straddles Cornwall and Devon. DCC reminded CC that:
Cornwall Council will be aware that there is a presumption against major development in AONBs unless “exceptional circumstances and...public interest” can be proven that would outweigh the adverse effects on the landscape and scenic qualities of the AONB.
Cornwall Council reckoned there were exceptional circumstances for the extension:
In summary, the development is considered to satisfactorily address the need to ensure that the development is in the public interest which therefore addresses the exceptional circumstances within the NPPF. 73
Read the Officer’s report recommending approval and decide for yourself - para 58 onwards - whether exceptional circumstances were demonstrated. According to the NPPF:
116. Planning permission should be refused for major developments in these designated areas except in exceptional circumstances and where it can be demonstrated they are in the public interest.
Being in the public interest does not in itself satisfy "exceptional circumstances"; there’s an "and" in 116 which, fortunately for AI, CC appears to have disregarded.
But AI must have been worried - especially after receiving a backlash over extending the life of Blackhill Quarry in the East Devon AONB. There was obviously a push to get anybody and everybody linked to the quarry to send letters of support; here’s just a handful - see if you can spot any similarities.
Objectors had voiced their concerns at the planning meeting:
“The opposers to the application far outweigh the supporters. It’s loss of a medieval landscape.” Adding that residents’ water quality ‘could be severely compromised’ if plans went ahead, he said the application ‘would be a crime against the environment’.
Those concerns, including the ones from DCC, fell on deaf ears - with 9 votes in favour and 4 against.
... if high polished stone value (PSV) mineral is not extracted from Straitgate Farm then it will need to be imported from elsewhere.
The alternative supply of high PSV aggregate for the Westleigh and Rockbeare asphalt plants would come from the applicant’s operation at Greystone Quarry in Launceston, Cornwall. Greystone Quarry is 70 miles from the Westleigh Quarry asphalt plant and 55.6 miles from the asphalt plant at Rockbeare.
That’s the same Rockbeare asphalt plant that’s been operating without permission since 2014, but as we said in our response to Straitgate's Reg22, this alternative supply:
obviously ignores the 4 million tonnes of permitted BSPB reserves and stockpiled pebbles already at Houndaller [and] in any case, the majority of the Straitgate resource would not end up in the high PSV market. This market is relatively small. Any increased “comparative importation distances” for this product would be dwarfed by the haulage plan to get Straitgate material to Hillhead.
Anyway, whilst AI popped the champagne corks at Greystone, the company must have surely wondered why on earth it hasn't yet won permission to quarry Straitgate Farm - a farm that is not within an AONB - a planning application that was first submitted back in 2015.
It can’t be for a lack of help from DCC. The Minerals Officer has been championing the site since before 2012, discarding a number of other sites for the Minerals Plan that even the Environment Agency highlighted had less constraints. In fact, it’s interesting to read DCC’s objection to Greystone:
… once restored, the proposal would permanently modify the distinctive natural topography of the valley slopes and remove long established fields, hedgerows, trees and a rural lane that make a positive contribution to the scenic quality of views from Devon. During operations, there would also be significant adverse visual and noise impacts of quarrying activity and movement of heavy plant, potentially using using reversing beepers, in between each stage, to create the associated spoil heaps and artificial bunds. Such impacts would clearly not conserve and enhance the quality of the scenery nor the rural tranquillity experienced within the valley.
It is not agreed that the proposed large quarry void, waterbody, bunds and planting would be an improvement on the existing landscape of fields, hedges and rural lanes, the pattern of which is distinctive and positively contributing to the scenery of the area.
You have to wonder why these comments by DCC aren't equally applicable to Straitgate Farm - a farm overlooked by an AONB.
