Wednesday 30 November 2022

‘Half of councils lack the capacity to monitor compliance with planning enforcement’

The finding comes from a Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) survey into the scale and nature of resourcing challenges faced by council enforcement teams. 
The RTPI collected responses from 133 enforcement officers representing approximately one third of local authorities in England.  
It reported that, “while 50 per cent of survey respondents answered their local authority did monitor compliance of conditions, almost all of the interviewees reported difficulties in doing this”.   
It concluded: ”[Authorities] are now largely reactive, relying on members of the public to alert them to non-compliance”.  
“Many councils experience people repeatedly carrying out serious unauthorised development, but these cases are dissimilar and warrant different responses. Lack of resourcing inhibits local authorities from taking direct action, unless there is a political will, and a central government pot of money is widely supported as a means to resolve this”. 
The RTPI survey found that funding and staffing were two of the biggest issues facing councils. The RTPI found 80 per cent of respondents reported not having enough enforcement officers to carry out their workload, 89 per cent said their councils currently experienced a backlog of enforcement cases, and 70 per cent that their authority struggled to recruit enforcement officers in the past five years. 
The results chime with data Planning collected as part of our research into the 50 biggest planning authorities, when we found a 12.2 per cent median drop in the number of enforcement notices issued in the two years to March 2022 compared to the two previous years. 
This problem came to a head in Gloucester this week with reports that the city council has 38 ongoing cases and no dedicated enforcement officers. 
The report’s author, Madeleine Bauer, said: “Long term under-resourcing combined with the accumulation of cases during the pandemic has resulted in backlogs and low staff morale.  “Moreover, the lack of resources both within enforcement teams as well as in the appeals system and the courts systems is responsible for large delays within the system. 
“The service provided to the public has significantly deteriorated”. 
Bauer added: “This undermines the planning system as a whole and negatively affects members of the public who rely on its integrity.”
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Thursday 24 November 2022

‘As a pedestrian against a 44-tonne truck, it really is nerve-wracking’

One reason for Devon County Council's refusal last year of Aggregate Industries' planning application to quarry Straitgate Farm was summarised in the Council's Statement of Case issued for the recent Public Inquiry: 
6.43 The Straitgate Proposals will, at peaks, send some 200 articulated tipper trucks out of the Site onto the highway network at Birdcage Lane, in close proximity to a bus stop used by schoolchildren. The Appellant proposes to gravel a verge to prevent passengers walking along the carriageway in times of wet weather, and to impose “embargoes” on truck movements during school pick up and drop off times. However, AIUK does not and would not own the relevant vehicle fleet, and it has provided the MPA with no certainty that the embargoes would be effective, in circumstances where there is considerable uncertainty regarding the impact of cattle crossings on the Appellant’s intended operations. 
It goes without saying that the interaction between 44-tonne HGVs and pedestrians, especially children, is a crucial matter to resolve, as this Somerset tale shows:
 
"The 2.8m [wide] road is our footway and we share it with these HGVs every day - and they're not giving way." 

"The HGV didn't stop for me, he kept edging towards me, so I just thought: 'I'm not moving, I've got right of way.' 

"So I stood still, he stood still. I sat in the road in the end. I thought: 'I'm not moving'. 

"He chose to bully me by edging forwards so that I would have to retrace my steps back to where I could go to a passing place. As a pedestrian against a 44-tonne truck, it really is nerve-wracking." 

Hanson Aggregates said it had since received a letter of apology from the "experienced" driver who works for one of its customers.
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Monday 21 November 2022

HVO – AI’s answer to the Straitgate sustainability issue – gets bad press

Aggregate Industries’ answer to the 2.5 million mile haulage scheme for its Straitgate Farm planning application is to claim that the HGVs hauling as-dug sand and gravel to Uffculme for processing would run on chip fat biofuel, or HVO as it's commonly known – hydrotreated vegetable oil. 

How this would be done is anybody’s guess, since the company does not own its own fleet of trucks and HVO is not available on garage forecourts – as Devon County Council pointed out. How this would be monitored and policed is another issue – as the Council also acknowledged. HVO was part of the S106 heads of terms when the application was originally determined, part of the legally enforceable planning obligations; now the HVO proposal finds itself as another planning condition – and we know the problems with enforcing those. 

Devon County Council’s barrister said in his closing submission: 
206. The Appellant’s proffered obligation/suggested condition (it is difficult to keep track – it was in the draft s.106 but seemingly no longer) that the vehicles use HVO goes nowhere. Mr Gould gave up that he can point to no example of the use of HVO in the aggregates setting. This is, as was put to him, innovative technology (he denied that, before being taken to his Proof as “innovative” is his own word). There can be no reliance placed upon it. Nor has there been any evidence from the Appellant as to how the MPA might hope to monitor so as to ensure HVO is being used. The Appellant’s suggested condition does not begin to answer matters: it simply seeks to kick the can down the road and require the question of whether monitoring is possible to be addressed later. Not good enough. To be addressed now. 
Mr Gould, who represented Aggregate Industries, preposterously claimed "the proposal minimises transport of minerals with innovative solutions to help achieve this". 

Apart from all that, uptake of HVO is being rejected by a number of organisations, including the Environment Agency and others: 


Even before determination last year, we pointed to the fact that rising imports of used cooking oil into the UK for biodiesel is indirectly "encouraging more deforestation in Southeast Asia" with some research claiming it’s "three times worse for the climate than regular diesel when indirect emissions from changes in the use of land are accounted for". 

Others have problems with it too. HVO is primarily made from used cooking oils or UCO:
According to Jo Gilroy, Balfour Beatty’s group sustainability director, it is simply a matter of due diligence. “We’re very good at jumping on solutions and thinking they’re the answer to our problems, aren’t we?” she says. “We look for easy wins, and HVO looked like that. 
“But any one-hit wonder solution needs to be examined carefully; you always have to do your due diligence.” 
As momentum built in favour of HVO, Balfour Beatty decided it had to delve deeper into the sustainability claims being made for the fuel before approving its use. And what it has found so far has only raised doubts. 
The chemistry of HVO is well understood but less clear is the sustainability of its supply chain. “What does the supply chain look like?” demands Gilroy, “Nobody knows - it’s very complex and there’s very little transparency.” 
One of the big attractions of HVO is that it purports to transform a troublesome waste material into a valuable commodity. But Gilroy says this is misleading: “UCO has always been used in the production of animal feed – it’s not a waste product,” she says. 
This might appear to be a mere technicality, but if one industry’s feedstock is diverted to supply another industry’s needs, alternative sources must be found. If producers of animal feed cannot obtain enough raw material in the form of UCO, they will turn to primary sources, namely commercially-grown vegetable oils such as palm oil. 
Mention palm oil and you open a whole new environmental can of worms...
Balfour Beatty’s Position paper on HVO can be found here: 
There is a high risk that the resulting increase in demand for used cooking oil is causing deforestation and the draining of peatland and marshland in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia where farmers are having to grow palm oil to produce animal feedstock. Such displacement activity has an extremely damaging impact on the environment: these areas store large amounts of carbon, so clearing them would lead to a significant increase in carbon emissions in those countries. EU research indicates that once the effects of land use change and draining of peatland are accounted for, the GHG impact of palm-oil derived HVO could be up to 3 times greater than standard fossil fuel diesel.
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Tungsten West’s secondary aggregates plan for Hemerdon Mine on hold

Tungsten West has withdrawn its planning application DCC/4314/2022 to increase HGV movements from Plymouth's tungsten and tin mine at Hemerdon from 50 to 200 per day. The application to facilitate the sale of secondary aggregates had attracted hundreds of objections. The company says it has listened: 
As a new company, we’ve learned a lot from this experience – the strength of feeling from local people about the volume of traffic and times of movements was severely underestimated, but we’ve heard you, we’ve listened and we’re taking action. We still believe that selling our secondary aggregates is the right thing to do, not only because it makes good business sense to minimise waste and maximise income streams, it will also benefit the environment, as secondary aggregates produce approximately 25% of the carbon footprint of primary aggregates. However, we are not prepared to develop a secondary aggregates business in a way that costs us the relationships we are trying to build with the local and wider community... In the short-term, we will halt the sale of secondary aggregates. Once we are in production, we will look to work within the HGV movement limits of 50 per day specified in our existing planning permission as our starting position. 
Previous posts on the Hemerdon Mine can be found here.


EDIT 12.12.22

Sales of aggregates continued throughout the reporting period, with £117,000 revenue being recognised. The Group ceased its production of aggregates from waste material left by the previous operator after selling 102,000 tonnes of material and demonstrating the ability to establish a market for the product. Aggregates production will recommence as the mineral processing ramp up completes. Product mix and volumes will be in line with mine waste facility strategy and valid permits.
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Holcim cement plant to pay $100K in settlement over air pollution violations

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Wednesday 16 November 2022

Town Farm Quarry extension

A planning application by Hanson to extend working at Town Farm Quarry, near Burlescombe, of the Budleigh Salterton Pebble Beds – the same sand and gravel resource that underlies Straitgate Farm – has been validated by Devon County Council this week. Application DCC/4326/2022 is for: 
Variation of condition 2 of permission number DCC/2770/2009 for the extension of time for a period of 10 years to allow for the completion of approved mineral extraction and restoration 
Hanson’s Non-Technical Summary says: 
1.2 Planning permission was originally granted by Devon County Council (Devon), the mineral planning authority, in 2010 for the development of a lateral extension to the original Town Farm Quarry. The sand and gravel in the extension area was due to be worked out and the land restored by 14 November 2022. However, output from the quarry has been less than expected and there remains a substantial volume of sand and gravel that will not be extracted by the current end date. 

13.3 Mineral extraction and restoration is expected to take a further 10 years and it is proposed to extend the end date by 10 years from 14 November 2022 to 14 November 2032. The proposed variation to condition 2 is set out below. Proposed Variation of Condition 2 The winning and working of sand and gravel at the site shall cease and the site be restored in accord with the approved Restoration Masterplan by 14 November 2032. 

14.2 There remains approximately 1 million tonnes of sand and gravel reserves yet to be worked and this material cannot be extracted, nor the Site restored by 14 November 2022. A time extension of 10 years is sought to allow all the remaining mineral to be extracted and the restoration to be completed. There are no other alterations to the approved development. 
Devon County Council’s most recent Local Aggregates Assessment says: 
2.5.8 Town Farm forms part of Hanson’s Whiteball operation, for which the processing plant lies in Somerset adjacent to its border with Devon. In recent years, extraction of sand and gravel for Whiteball has taken place within Devon at Town Farm; however, an application was submitted to Somerset County Council in March 2017 for the extraction of 400,000 tonnes of sand and gravel at Whiteball within Somerset, and this is awaiting determination. 

2.5.9 Following completion of extraction at Town Farm, it is anticipated that the Whiteball processing plant will be supplied from materials extracted in Somerset, for which Somerset County Council’s Minerals Plan identifies a Preferred Area and an Area of Search. This suggests that, during the latter part of the period to 2033 covered by the Devon Minerals Plan, some of the sand and gravel supply previously delivered from Devon will be met from Somerset through continued working at Whiteball.
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Tuesday 8 November 2022

COP27 has begun, and suddenly the polluters pretend to care

Aggregate Industries and its parent company Holcim’s lamentable record on CO2 and climate action is the subject of far too many posts on this blog. But now that COP27 has started, it’s clearly time for things like this again:


Even in Devon, how much Aggregate Industries actually cares about climate action is plain for all to see. 

In 2015, Aggregate Industries recognised the harm of processing Straitgate material 23 miles away at Hillhead, warning "processing at Hillhead may be feasible, but would generate a massively greater quantity of CO2 emissions", and would be "unsustainable": 
8.38 Hillhead Quarry does, however, present an option for processing of the Straitgate deposit, but the consequential impact of additional CO2 emissions from greater haulage distances are considered to be unsustainable. 
Fast forward to 2022 – with the climate emergency even more urgent – and processing at Hillhead is exactly what Aggregate Industries wants to do, appealing Devon County Council’s decision to refuse its proposed quarry at Straitgate Farm with haulage of as-dug material totalling some 2.5 million miles.  

At the appeal, the barrister representing Aggregate Industries had the gall to claim "transport has been "minimised", complying with M22 [of the Devon Minerals Plan]... Having regard to the available options, the HVO offer, and the greenhouse gas report."

Of course, no other UK aggregates operator hauls as-dug sand and gravel 23 miles for processing. 
 

And it’s surprising that Aggregate Industries even references the infamous greenhouse gas report, subject of much discussion at the appeal. Devon County Council's barrister called it "a deeply flawed piece of work" – completely ignoring the 8 million tonnes of sand and gravel allocated right next door to the Hillhead processing plant. 

That’s how much Aggregate Industries really cares about climate change.
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More evidence: unsaturated zone velocity – metres per YEAR not metres per day

At the Straitgate Inquiry, much of the hydrogeology discussion centred around the speed at which groundwater travels through the unsaturated zone. 

The barrister for Devon County Council said in his closing submission: 
52. In the face of the literature that has measured speed down through the Sherwood Sandstone (of which the BSPB is part) of 1.06m/year, the Appellant advances a remarkable claim: that speed is in fact in a range up to 16.9m/day, by reference to some open borehole and trial pit testing and relying on relatively rapid responses to rainfall shown by borehole loggers measuring (through pressure) the level of the water table. 
What a coincidence then that during the Inquiry this paper should be published:
 

It concerns the international problem of nitrate pollution in groundwater: 
When understanding the impacts of this nitrate legacy on water quality, the nitrate transport velocity (vN) in the unsaturated zone (USZ) is of great significance. Although some local USZ vN data measured or simulated are available, there has been no such a dataset at the global scale. Here, we present a Global-scale unsaturated zone Nitrate transport Velocity dataset (GNV) generated from a Nitrate Time Bomb (NTB) model using global permeability and porosity and global average annual groundwater recharge data.
As anyone casting their eye over the paper will see – velocity in the unsaturated zone is measured in metres per year NOT metres per day.
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