Alongside sustaining a considerable amount of local employment, [the site] also provides an opportunity to add new and improved community and tourism resources to the local area, both during mining operations as part of [the company's] ‘restoration first’ approach to its surface mining schemes and as part of the site’s final restoration.
Our planned investment has the potential to offer so much to both local people and visitors to the area, and we are therefore announcing our intentions at the earliest possible opportunity to start a dialogue with local residents, businesses, tourism bodies and visitors, so that we can understand their views better and enable them to have a direct influence on the site’s design and the benefits it will bring to the area.
We want [the site] to set a new benchmark for modern minerals developments, delivering significant economic input alongside substantial benefits for the local community and wildlife alike, and our absolute priority is to design a scheme that delivers tangible, long-term local and regional economic, environmental and social benefits from day one of the project.
Sorry - this is Banks Mining, not Aggregate Industries. Open cast coal mining, not sand and gravel. Are these just words? Maybe not. The company created the giant Northumberlandia ("Lady of the North") earth sculpture near Cramlington as part of its Shotton surface mine. If a quarry should transpire at Straitgate Farm, local people should expect more.
