As demand failed to pick up again in 2019Q4, sales volumes for construction mineral products were lower in 2019 compared to 2018, falling 3.9% for ready-mixed concrete (RMC), -2.2% for aggregates, -1.7% for mortar and -0.8% for asphalt #MPAEconomics pic.twitter.com/G70WEiH5Ok— Mineral Products Association (@MineralProduct) February 4, 2020
Is there a significant fall in sand and gravel sales here too? In Devon, we still don’t know what happened in 2018 – let alone 2019. Despite repeated requests by Devon County Council, one aggregates producer had still not supplied figures for 2018 by the first month of 2020.
The latest figures available for Devon are for 2017, contained in the Council’s 7th Local Aggregate Assessment. We have written about LAAs before. This document tells us:
1.2.3 The LAA will continue to be published annually to inform development and monitoring of Minerals/Local Plans, including recent sales and revisions to levels of reserves and the length of landbanks.
The MPA has some helpful advice on LAAs for its members:
...operators can assist the programme for the production of a LAA by the timely return of survey forms (see Section 9). Meeting these deadlines is important to the overall aggregate planning process, to ensure information is up to date and accurate.
Section 9? Completed survey forms should be returned to mineral planning authorities by... "the end of March", not the following year.
Without timely, accurate sales figures of sand and gravel for the last two years, you might think, therefore, that it would be difficult for "the LAA... to inform development" – particularly mineral development, particularly when it comes to, say, determination of a planning application for a brand new sand and gravel quarry in East Devon.
