Thursday 28 May 2020

DCC says correlation ‘broken’ between aggregate sales and housing completions

Devon County Council has published its 8th Devon Local Aggregate Assessment for the years 2009-2018. It confirms figures we posted in Long term trend in sales of sand and gravel in Devon continues to decline, where we wrote:
Sales of sand and gravel in Devon declined by 10% in 2018, according to figures just released by Devon County Council – from 598,000 tonnes to 541,000 tonnes. Contrast this to the national situation where, according to the MPA, "total sales of land-won sand and gravel increased by 2.9% in 2018”.
At the end of 2018, Devon's sand and gravel reserves (material already with permission to be extracted) stood at 4.885 million tonnes – a drop over 12 months that was greater than the level of sales, after Aggregate Industries "lost" some 700k tonnes or more – as we posted in AI has lost sand and gravel reserves AGAIN, this time at Hillhead.
We also pointed out that:
It is noteworthy that the 2018 sales figure is 23% less than the finger-in-the-air projection DCC made in the 6th LAA.
DCC’s LAA is now under new authorship. What else does the report tell us?

Section 4, on "Future Aggregate Supply", has seen some changes since the last edition. We learn that "correlation between land-won aggregate sales and housing completions in Devon… has been broken", which DCC concludes "could indicate an increase in alternative methods of construction."

This was a subject we originally pointed to back in 2017, after DCC published its 6th LAA. In the post Is DCC's LAA living in LAA LAA land?, we pointed to the Council's whizzy new upwards projections for sand and gravel sales based on "housing trajectory models". At that time, DCC claimed its LAA had:
demonstrated that there is a correlation between land-won aggregate sales and housing completions in Devon over the past ten years.
We posted:
That’s hardly surprising for land-won aggregates you might think, but for sand and gravel the link appears more tenuous, given that while housing starts have bounced back from the recession, Devon’s sand and gravel sales continue to fall; given that in 2016, when housing starts hit a 9-year high, Devon's sand and gravel sales fell 14%.



DCC now concedes that correlation between housing completions and sales of land-won aggregate – which includes not only sand and gravel but crushed rock too – has become "broken":
Section 4.1 has demonstrated that there has been a correlation between land-won aggregate sales and housing completions in Devon, and that the next ten years are forecast to see significantly higher levels of house building together with other infrastructure development. However, this correlation has been broken most recently (whether this is an anomaly or new situation will established in future LAAs) and previous experience indicates that caution needs to be taken over the delivery of forecast levels of development, while 4.1.9 highlights a range of other factors that will influence demand for aggregates.




Did we learn anything else? Sales of marine aggregates in Devon apparently "declined to their lowest level in the past ten years."

The Devon Minerals Plan tells us that:
5.4.6 Small quantities of marine-dredged sand and gravel are landed at Appledore and Yelland to serve local markets in northern Devon that are remote from the land-won sources in the east of the County.

DCC reports in this 8th LAA that:
In 2018 only a negligible amount of marine-dredged sand and gravel originating from the Bristol Channel was reported for this assessment, landed at Appledore.
More specifically, DCC reported landings of marine aggregate of 14k tonnes in 2017, and zero in 2018:
No tonnage was delivered to Appledore in 2018. Deliveries to Yelland were recorded for ‘beach nourishment’ in the report, but this use is not applicable to this assessment.
This may indeed be the case, although this 2018 tweet suggests otherwise:


And certainly in 2019, marine aggregates were being landed at Yelland again.





Aggregates delivered by sea keep trucks off roads. Last year saw aggregate from Somerset delivered by sea to Hinkley Point C, after a new jetty became operational:
EDF says each delivery keeps around 300 lorry loads off the roads and the jetty is expected to handle the equivalent of around 100,000 lorry loads over its life.
Much of it comes from Hanson UK’s Whatley quarry, near Frome, where it can be transported directly by rail to Bristol Port, before travelling the last 32 miles to Hinkley Point C by ship.
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