Aggregate Industries has once again failed to meet an agreed extension for determination of its planning application to quarry Straitgate Farm.
Last October, Aggregate Industries and Devon County Council agreed to extend the determination date of the company's planning application to 31 March 2021. It was the 11th such extension. This extension has now been missed, given that submission of further information would require at least 30 days of public consultation before the next DMC meeting of 24 March.
What was Aggregate Industries’ excuse in October?
we require further time to compile the additional information
How long has Aggregate Industries had to compile information? As we previously posted:
Aggregate Industries began compiling back in 2011. A planning application was launched in 2015. The application was withdrawn. More information was compiled. In 2017 a revised application was lodged. Questions were raised. More compiling. In 2019, questions were still being raised about fundamental issues on sustainability, on drinking water sources and the cattle crossing conundrum; information that should have been compiled with the original application, information still outstanding.
At the time, we questioned why a few more months would do it. Nevertheless, we had the assurance from Aggregate Industries’ CEO no less. Last year, Guy Edwards claimed the company would be submitting the additional information required "shortly".
That was almost 3 months ago. And still no sign.
So what cock-and-bull excuse has Devon County Council been fed this time? How much extra time will Aggregate Industries now buy itself? Weeks? Months? Years? Ad infinitum?
What we do know is it’s now 2021 and Aggregate Industries has been compiling information for TEN YEARS. No planning application for a quarry – however complicated – needs that amount of time.
What that tells us is that this application makes NO sense – from a groundwater perspective, from a sustainability perspective, even from a cows crossing the road perspective.
On the cattle crossing issue it’s still not clear we are any further forward.
It is clearly fundamental to know how this issue can be resolved before the application for a quarry can proceed to determination.
In May 2017, Devon County Council made it clear that it needed to see how the issue of cows and their impact on road safety could be dealt with before proceeding any further; the Council’s number one Regulation 22 request of Aggregate Industries was:
assess the implications of the farmer moving cattle across the B3174 as a result of the proposal
For whatever reason, Aggregate Industries has not wanted to do so. No document that we have seen has yet addressed the issues: addressed the safety implications, addressed the traffic implications.
Aggregate Industries took all last year just to submit a planning application to East Devon District Council for a new field gate, an application still awaiting the Road Safety Audit that was requested by Devon County Council in December.
Devon County Council has told Aggregate Industries that its application for a quarry at Straitgate "needs to include the proposed agricultural access". Clearly we will need to know the outcome of the application for this access – and the impact of cows regularly crossing the B3174 Exeter Road in this location – before any quarry application can be determined.
What we already know is that a quarry at Straitgate Farm – a dairy farm – would remove almost 90% of the grazing land and displace cows to alternative pasture across the B3174 Exeter Road. What we also already know is that Highways England says the risk to the A30 must be assessed if livestock movements across the B3174 were to increase.
So the wait goes on. Lives on hold. Businesses on hold. Either the sand and gravel – barely a million tonnes of saleable material some 23 miles away from the site where it would be processed, the site that already has 10 million tonnes of the same material in the ground – is extremely important, or Aggregate Industries has friends in high places.
