Aggregate Industries seemingly has little regard for planning conditions. Only last month, we posted AI in “non-compliance” with YET ANOTHER Section 106 agreement, arguing:
This is plainly not a company that can be trusted to respond in a timely manner if drinking water sources were to be corrupted from quarrying activities at Straitgate.
In its role as Minerals and Waste Planning Authority, Devon County Council "carry out monitoring visits for all mineral and landfill sites to ensure compliance with the terms of their planning permissions". The resulting reports can be found here. The Council recently paid such a visit to Aggregate Industries’ Westleigh Quarry complex near Tiverton.
Apart from detailing a "high level" of dust complaints and "a number of blasting complaints", the resulting report details a failure to comply with planning conditions.
This is not an isolated incident. In 2018, we posted how the company had failed to comply with other planning conditions at Westleigh.
The latest non-compliance relates to planning application DCC/4007/2017, a "Section 73 application to vary the approved working scheme to extract an additional 600,000 tonnes". We wrote various posts about this application – including about the dust and the bully-boy tactics – how:
Objections to application DCC/4007/2017 to vary the working scheme at Westleigh Quarry tell a story of dust inside and outside homes, of noise, of blasting vibration, of HGV problems on unsuitable roads, of damage to roads going un-repaired, of rules continuously being broken, of a complaints system that doesn't work, even of a "Section 106 condition from the 1997 Application [that] remains unfulfilled".
The planning application to vary the approved working scheme – excavating the south east corner of Rocknell quarry – was approved on 15 January 2019 subject to various conditions, one of which was to submit a Landscape and Ecological Management Plan for the site within six months:
REASON: To safeguard the rural character of the locality reduce the visual impact of the site and in order to promote nature conservation interests at the site in accordance with Policies M17 and M18 of the Devon Minerals Plan 2011-2033.
Did Aggregate Industries take this condition seriously? Not judging by this passage in Devon County Council’s recent monitoring report:
This scheme was initially due on 15/07/2019. One was not supplied. This was raised at the last monitoring visit and it was logged on the report as ‘work required’ with an extension until 06/02/2020. A draft LEMP was supplied on the 14 May 2020 however it needed to be revised to be acceptable and formally submitted. This is still yet to be provided.
A revised draft document was eventually submitted last month – more than 18 months late.
Devon County Council also details a further non-compliance issue, which dates back to the unfulfilled Section 106 condition from 1997:
Section 106 Agreement dated 15 January 2019. The hydrogeology aspects relate to certain depth of working where a water resource monitoring “water scheme” is to be submitted. This process is said to be ongoing and consultation underway with the Environment Agency. It will need to be decided whether the scheme is fundamentally unacceptable to the Environmental Agency.
In other words, water monitoring conditions that were meant to be sorted out in 1997 – the ones now detailed in the S106 dated 15 January 2019 – seemingly still remain up in the air almost 25 years later.
And this the company local people are meant to have faith in to safeguard their drinking water??
