In 2020, sales of sand and gravel in Devon were 437,000 tonnes, down 12.6% on the previous year, according to figures recently released by Devon County Council. Nationally, sales of sand and gravel were down 12.4% in the same year, according to the MPA.
The long term trend in sales of sand and gravel in Devon continues to decline; the fall in 2020 comes on top of a 7.6% fall in 2019, and a 10% fall in 2018.
Since 1990, annual sales of sand and gravel in Devon have fallen by 74%.
At the end of 2020, reserves of sand and gravel in Devon stood at 2.88 million tonnes, a landbank of 5.7 years. Reserves fell by 1.3 million tonnes from the previous year, 0.88 million tonnes more than sales.
It would seem that Devon's aggregate suppliers have carelessly lost millions of tonnes of reserves yet again. According to Devon County Council:
The reduction can be attributed to a reassessment of reserves by the operators and their reporting of these to us. It is not just the sand and gravel reserve which has been affected by this in 2020, there has also been a significant drop in the crushed rock reserves too (from 95.378mt in 2019 to 81.323mt in 2020).
