It's nearly Christmas and the Straitgate saga continues to blight the lives of local people – as it has done since 1965.
We have often used the word saga to describe the attempts by Aggregate Industries to recover a relatively minor amount of sand and gravel from Straitgate Farm. From this dictionary entry, you can see why:
A saga is the kind of long, drawn-out story that can cause the people who hear it to roll their eyes in boredom.
To see the long, drawn-out story for Straitgate, click history, and indeed be prepared to roll your eyes.
Now that Aggregate Industries has finally won permission to quarry Straitgate Farm – permission to quarry little more than 1 million tonnes of saleable sand and gravel from the 20 million tonnes originally hoped for – you might have expected a rush of activity by the company to get things going, given how much the company previously complained about how its other site 23 miles away at Houndaller could not produce enough of the right material, and given the company only has 3 years to fulfil a gamut of onerous pre-commencement conditions and obligations.
But apparently not. Click update to see how much Aggregate Industries has achieved – or is prepared to say it has achieved – in the first of those 3 years. Suddenly, it would seem, Aggregate Industries is in no rush at all.
No doubt there will be more fun and games next year, but for now we wish all readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
