At the end of 2017, permitted sand and gravel reserves in Devon stood at 6.2 million tonnes – according to DCC. This represents a landbank of over 12 years, based on a 10-year sales average that now stands at 0.516 million tonnes. If sales were to continue at this rate there would be a shortfall of 2.0 million tonnes by the end of 2033 (the period covered by the Devon Minerals Plan) – before the provision of any of the new sites designated in that Plan. More details here.
Devon's permitted sand and gravel reserves have fallen in 2017 by more than sales. In part this is due to planning permission lapsing at Haldon Quarry near Exeter Racecourse.
This is a soft sand quarry that has been unworked (and unrestored – as these photos show) since around 2007, and is now the subject of planning application 17/03000/MAJ for "a luxury holiday site - including 42 hot tubs". This is an application that has raised a number of objections, including from the Devon Stone Federation who considers that "the proposal would sterilise an important underlying mineral" and remarks:
The future supply profile for sand and gravel is constrained and the recently adopted Devon Minerals Plan has had to allocate additional sites for extraction to maintain the landbank until the end of the plan period. It is clear that there is a potential issue developing in the relationship between the location of the reserves making up the landbank and the spatial pattern of working to be pursued if the latter is to reflect, within geological constraints, the anticipated pattern of demand in the future.
Haldon Quarry has a history of mineral planning permissions, of which the most recent (granted in April 2013) lapsed in April 2017 but with restoration and aftercare remaining to be complied with... the applicant should be required to provide a Mineral Resource Assessment if it is considered that the mineral resource is not of current or potential economic value.
But the applicants helped along by consultants SLR have other ideas:
The adopted Minerals Plan establishes that permitted reserves of sand and gravel stood at 7.01 million tonnes in 2015 and average production was at 0.56 million tonnes (see para 5.3.4). The Plan goes on to identify two preferred areas which contain up to 9.2 million tonnes of sand and gravel [Straitgate, with up to 1.2 million tonnes but arguably much less, and Penslade near Uffculme] which together will be sufficient to maintain the landbank over the plan period which runs until 2033… The reserves at Haldon are therefore clearly not necessary to maintain sand and gravel supplies in the County over the life of the Minerals Plan… it is clear that re-introducing mineral extraction back into an area which has become one of the major visitor destinations in the County would be challenging.
It was of course SLR that helped AI with its original planning application for Straitgate Farm in 2015, the application that subsequently had to be withdrawn.
But what’s noteworthy in all this is that the over-provision of 9.2 million tonnes in the new Minerals Plan – to cover a 2 million tonnes shortfall – is being trotted out as a reason why an existing sand quarry near Exeter is now not needed and "42 hot tubs" are.
The Minerals Plan is clearly not providing the "sustainable management of Devon’s minerals" it promised: not if the greenfield site at Straitgate is now being used as a reason why another "important underlying mineral" should be sterilised. As the Minerals Plan states:
Policy M11 expresses a preference for the extension of an existing aggregates quarry to secure new resources rather than development of a new quarry, in recognition of the generally lower level of impacts on the local environment and communities and the benefits of utilising existing infrastructure. 5.3.7
