Devon County Council has now provided 'interim' sand and gravel sales figures for 2019. Sales were 0.500 million tonnes, down 7.6% on 2018. Nationally, sales of sand and gravel were down 5.4% in the same year, according to the MPA.
The 7.6% fall in Devon comes on top of a 10% fall in sales in 2018, a year that saw the national figure up 1.3%. The long term trend in sales of sand and gravel in Devon continues to decline.
Last year, Devon County Council conceded that the correlation between aggregate sales and housing completions was "broken".
At the end of 2019, reserves of sand and gravel in Devon stood at 4.199 million tonnes.
Devon County Council is hoping to release sand and gravel figures for 2020 "within the next month or so." They are unlikely to show any improvement, given that national figures were down 12.4%.
