Should we begin to feel sorry for Aggregate Industries?
Readers may remember that in August, solicitors Foot Anstey and traffic consultants Vectos, representing the third party whose oak tree (Tree H) is at risk from AI’s plans, responded to the planning application to quarry Straitgate Farm; we posted Highway consultants demonstrate AI’s attempt to use Birdcage Lane has ‘failed’; Damage to 3rd party property ‘would expose Council to legal action’.
In September, AI supplied a revised junction plan which included a pedestrian footway.
This week we were copied into a letter from Foot Anstey and Vectos to DCC criticising those revised plans. They raised a number of new issues; even the gravel path for pedestrians is not deliverable:
In relation to the proposed drawing provided by the applicant, it is clear that it creates even more problems.
Foot Anstey and Vectos also commented further on Tree H - which is not owned by AI but is "likely [to] be damaged by the development and need to be felled." The owner of this oak tree has previously objected to such damage. We've posted on the subject of Tree H before: How AI’s site access plans still have a major problem and Should DCC support a scheme that requires criminal damage to implement?
DCC has already been advised by Foot Anstey that the third party:
... will not allow damage to his property. Accordingly, any development which may cause such damage will be resisted through available legal means, which may include an application for an injunction and/or an action for damages. Any such action would be brought against both the applicant and the Council (in its capacity as the local highways authority), and may also include a private prosecution for criminal damage.
Notwithstanding the numerous additional trees that would be lost on the other side of Birdcage Lane, DCC was of the view that AI's revised plan had fixed the Tree H issue, that it "would not require the sort of construction that would be likely to impact on the tree".
In their latest letter, Foot Anstey and Vectos disagreed:
It is not accepted that the provision of a gravel footway would not harm the tree. There would still need to be a deep dig in the highway area which would harm the tree. This is confirmed by the applicant's delineation of Tree H's Root Protection Area on the Tree Constraint Plan SF 6/5-9 in the Arboricultural Survey Report, within which no works should be allowed. "RPAs... provide a minimum area around the tree which should be left undisturbed during the development, in order to remove the risk of decline and ensure the survival of the trees." (paragraph 3.1)
Local people will surely concur with the closing remarks of Foot Anstey's letter:
With each new attempt to address a problem, the applicant merely creates new ones, demonstrating that the scheme is inherently poorly conceived.
