Friday 17 August 2018

When an East Devon minerals site loses the benefit of restoration

Earlier this month we posted that Aggregate Industries’ planning application to retain its asphalt plant at Rockbeare – the plant operating without permission since 2014 – had finally been approved.

This area has now lost the benefit of being restored back to woodland, as had previously been agreed, and AI will pay £10k to DCC, to "provide for compensatory work in a location yet to be determined" on "appropriate biodiversity project(s)... sought by the County Ecologist"; it’s an example of biodiversity offsetting, or as some would argue "a licence to trash nature".

DCC now has funding for woodland planting, "ideally in the Newton Abbot / Bovey area."