Aggregate Industries has yet again failed to meet an agreed extension for determination of its planning application to quarry Straitgate Farm.
In December, Aggregate Industries and Devon County Council agreed the 9th extension for this current application to 31 March. This extension has now been missed, given that submission of further information would require at least 30 days of public consultation before the DMC meeting of 18 March.
Back in March 2015, Aggregate Industries held public exhibitions in support of its application, which went live 3 months later. That application was later withdrawn, and another submitted. Since the start, Aggregate Industries' planning applications have been beset by problems – aired to death over the years on this blog. Its current application comes with an extra price tag: a climate-busting nonsensical 2.5 million mile haulage scheme from quarry face to processing plant.
This was not what was envisaged by the Council when the site was earmarked for the Devon Minerals Plan in 2011. The site no longer accords with the thrust of that Plan, which says mineral development should be about:
minimising transportation by road and generation of greenhouse gases
Whilst Aggregate Industries' planning application hasn't moved very far in 5 years, the world has. We’ve had the EU referendum and Brexit, Trump in The White House and Johnson in No.10, Greta Thunberg and the climate strikes, the Australian wildfires and 20°C in Antarctica.
Five years on, Aggregate Industries still appears to be going nowhere. Here's where we could have put a funny gif, the sort we've used before, but let's share a video instead:
The question now is: How much more time can Aggregate Industries go on pretending progress is being made with its planning application for Straitgate Farm?
The Council might say that applications of this nature are complex, that these things take time. But let's not forget that Aggregate Industries started investigations in earnest at Straitgate in 2011, having drilled the area extensively in 1990, having already had one planning application turned down shortly after purchasing the site in 1965 – in part due to risk to water supplies, the ongoing concern today.
So you could say Aggregate Industries has had considerably longer than 5 years to get its ducks in a row. But perhaps all mineral companies have problems. Let's see what happens elsewhere.
The number of applications for new mineral resources submitted by the industry continues to be low. Anecdotal feedback from industry suggests this reflects the cumulative costs of obtaining access to land and securing the necessary permissions and permits, together with the underlying political and economic uncertainty.
But on the issue of the average time taken for determination:
The time required to get a sand and gravel application to determination once it has been submitted increased to 17 months in 2018 (compared to 10 months in 2017).
It has now been a staggering 57 months since Aggregate Industries' submitted its first application, which clearly indicates something's not right. Someone needs to say enough is enough.
