A new £7.2 million primary school is planned for Thorne Farm, Ottery St Mary; land next to the school site has been earmarked for 150 homes to help fund the cost. A Devon County Council consultation on the proposal runs until 18 November. This Sidmouth Herald article has more details.
We posted on plans for the new primary school – which would be just 1000m downhill and downwind of any dust, PM10, PM2.5, from a proposed quarry at Straitgate Farm – earlier in the year, in Preparing for climate change – a local example in Ottery St Mary. We also posted about the 50th anniversary of the devastating floods in East Devon including in Tipton St John, the village whose primary school is set to be relocated.
Planners will need cognisance of the flooding implications for the Thorne Farm site too. More than 50 properties in the Thorne Farm area suffered flooding in 2008 when the Cadhay Bog stream, which originates at Straitgate, became a raging torrent. The Environment Agency subsequently built a flood relief scheme, but conceded:
... the scheme for Thorne Farm does not take account of any increased surface water flows that may occur as a result of quarrying upstream of that site.
The proposed site of the new primary school is in a Mineral Consultation Area. In 2017, we posted about how the new Devon Minerals Plan had plastered Mineral Consultation and Safeguarding Areas all across Devon where few existed before. Objective 2 of the Minerals Plan now aims to:
Safeguard from other forms of development Devon’s current or potential economic mineral resources, together with the infrastructure needed for their processing and sustainable transportation and the capacity required for the tipping of mineral waste, to ensure their continued availability to meet the needs of future generations.
Policy M2 of the Minerals Plan says:
Mineral resources and infrastructure within the Mineral Safeguarding Areas defined on the Policies Map will be protected from sterilisation or constraint by non-mineral development within or close to those Areas by permitting such development if:
(a) it can be demonstrated through a Mineral Resource Assessment and in consultation with the relevant mineral operators that the mineral resource or infrastructure concerned is not of current or potential economic or heritage value; or...
(d) there is an overriding strategic need for the non-mineral development…
Point 3.3.14 says:
For Devon’s industrial minerals and some aggregate minerals, non-mineral development will normally be opposed where it would sterilise resources of economic value.
At the time, we posted Devon’s new Minerals Plan could blight thousands of homes across the county and Is this really the best way to 'safeguard' minerals? Shortly after that, in Does Devon's new Minerals Plan stand for anything?, we pointed to the problems Sibelco had with mineral safeguarding when planning permission was granted by Devon County Council for improvements to the A382. Sibelco was concerned the scheme would sterilise significant reserves, and lodged an application for a judicial review of that decision.
A primary school and 150 new homes are certainly enough to sterilise nearby mineral deposits, deposits the nature of which one operator in particular considers important enough to necessitate a 2.5 million mile haulage plan.
Inset Plan 3 from the Devon Minerals Plan shows the proximity of such mineral resources and safeguarding areas to the land in question. The resource north of Cadhay Bog (S8 in this document) was assessed by Devon County Council in 2012. The Council considered that "the potential yield [of S8] is unknown, but a crude calculation assuming 15 metres depth gives an estimate of 12.2 million tonnes". However, despite then safeguarding the minerals five years later, and throwing in a 250m 'buffer' for good measure, the Council also concluded in 2012 that S8 was unsuitable for mineral extraction due to "significant harm to biodiversity and water environment".
Nevertheless – given that plans to relocate Tipton St John Primary School to the land at Thorne Farm owned by Devon County Council have been in the pipeline for some time, and that according to Devon County Council, "no other suitable sites are available that can produce a development income to pay for the school" – it will surprise some to learn that the question of sterilised mineral resources has yet to be broached.
