Aggregate Industries’ pushback on planning conditions has already started

Aggregate Industries claims: 

In all areas of our business, including internal and external interactions, we always act with integrity. 

Why is integrity important? Aggregate Industries tells us: 

High performance with high integrity is key to sustainable success. 

It may only be corporate BS, but doesn’t it sound good? Well done to the company’s PR gurus. 

If, however, Aggregate Industries does act with integrity, if Aggregate Industries does have strong moral and ethical principles, if Aggregate Industries is virtuous, honourable, trustworthy, it would of course want to abide by planning conditions. It would not want to find weasel words to get around them. It would recognise that planning conditions are there for a reason. They are not there to be interpreted in a way that is favourable to the bottom line of a multinational cement conglomerate. They are there to protect people and the surrounding environment. They are there to "enable development to proceed where it would otherwise have been necessary to refuse planning permission."

But, surprise, surprise, what do we find? Aggregate Industries is already pushing back on the conditions imposed for its permission to quarry Straitgate Farm, pushing back on environmental protection. 

Take the two majestic oak trees, trees F and G, which sit either side of the approved site entrance, but outside of any mineral working area. In its planning application, Aggregate Industries admitted: 

the works will potentially interfere with the root protection areas of Trees F, G... and it is likely they will be damaged by the development and need to be felled. 4.1

One of the reasons Devon County Council had refused Aggregate Industries' application to quarry Straitgate Farm was because: 

6. The proposed development would result in an unacceptable loss of mature trees and hedgerows leading to the fragmentation of habitat corridors, contrary to Policies M16 and M17 of the Devon Minerals Plan, Policy D3 of the East Devon Local Plan and Policies NP1, NP2 and NP8 of the Ottery St Mary and West Hill Neighbourhood Plan. 

The Council defended this reason for refusal at the Public Inquiry when the company appealed. 

However, by that time, Aggregate Industries had changed its story about trees F and G. Representatives for the company assured Government Planning Inspectors that the site entrance could be created without harming these trees or their roots. 

In their subsequent report, the Inspectors recognised that these 200-year old oaks "are worthy of protection and should be retained". This was secured by Condition 41, which states, unequivocally:

Outside the designated mineral working areas, trees shall not be felled, lopped or topped or have their roots damaged and hedgerows shall not be removed, thinned or cut back without the prior written consent of the Mineral Planning Authority.

What could be clearer than that? 

East Devon District Council also recognised that the trees were worthy of protection and last year put a Tree Preservation Order on both. 

The trees contribute to the amenity and character of the area and they are considered under threat from development and the impact of heavy machinery and vehicles.

The Council was of the view that:  

The detailed plans submitted by Aggregate Industries show both trees being retained but then states that tree F (named as T3 in TPO) and tree G (named as T2 in TPO) ‘will be monitored and only removed if necessary’. This is somewhat ambiguous and raises concern that the trees may not be given the full protection during construction if it’s considered that the trees can be removed ‘if considered necessary’.  

It is noted as stated by the Objection [from Aggregate Industries], that the trees are protected by Condition 6 of The Appeal as they are shown as being retained on the plans (albeit with the caveat of ‘will be monitored and only removed if necessary’). However, with the conditions being only short-term and the rather ambiguous wording, it is considered that TPO will therefore help ensure long-term protection and that they are appropriately managed by current and future owners.

It is a criminal offence to wilfully damage or destroy a protected tree without consent from the local authority. TPOs allow the potential for "unlimited fines" in the case of damage:  

in determining the amount of fine, the court shall take into account any financial benefit which has resulted, or is likely to result, from the offence.

You would think that that would be the end of the matter. But no. At a meeting last month, Aggregate Industries said it would try not to damage oak trees F and G. 

Try. And in writing this month, Aggregate Industries confirmed: 

Our tree and highway consultants are looking at this issue and I will be able to update you in due course. I would refer you to approved plan reference R22/L/3-3-005 which clearly labels Trees F and G as "condition of tree to be monitored and only removed if necessary". 

Removed if necessary. It’s a surprising position to take, not only because of the clarity of Condition 41, and the TPO, but also because – as East Devon District Council recognised – the approved plans (listed below) all show the oak trees retained:

0308.101 rev F Junction improvement scheme layout 

0308.104 Junction improvement long section 

SF/RS/XX Road Section AB 

SF/RS/XX Road Section CD 

Clearly, Aggregate Industries thinks it’s above planning conditions and TPOs. Integrity?

Ignominious twist: Straitgate may have to be mothballed until better times – says AI

At the Public Inquiry in October 2022, Aggregate Industries assured Government Planning Inspectors that the need for minerals from Straitgate Farm was "urgent": 

8.3 The landbank for Devon is below the required 7 year supply and as such the need can be considered as urgent. Combined with the lack of supply in the wider region which is detailed in the follow paragraphs, the need for the development is indeed considered urgent. 

Aggregate Industries’ Mr Kimblin KC concluded in his closing statement: 

170. The essential planning circumstances in this case are so very simple. The appeal site is one of two allocations in the DMP and the site is needed in order to maintain a steady and adequate supply of minerals, which the MPA is presently failing to provide. 

Needed. Urgent. So very simple. 

And yet, after struggling over many, many years to win planning permission to quarry Straitgate Farm – after fighting tooth and nail to make sure the site was in the Minerals Plan, after extensive site investigations, after two failed planning applications and a successful, but time-consuming and expensive appeal, after putting local people through decades of blight and aggravation – Aggregate Industries is now talking about mothballing the site.

How has it come to this? 

Around the same time Aggregate Industries’ representatives made those claims to Planning Inspectors, another aggregates company in Devon was having altogether different concerns. It was not thinking needed and urgent. Precisely the reverse. 

Aggregate Industries is not the only company in Devon with reserves of sand and gravel from the Budleigh Salterton Pebble Beds, the material that underlies Straitgate Farm. 

Heidelberg Materials – or Hanson under a previous guise – owns Town Farm Quarry near Burlescombe in Mid Devon, close to the Devon/Somerset border. As-dug mineral from this quarry has previously been processed at Whiteball Quarry, 2 miles away in Somerset, which is itself only 4 miles away from Aggregate Industries’ Hillhead Quarry, where Straitgate material would be processed. 

Heidelberg’s permission for Town Farm – extended in 2023 – does not have the same long list of restrictive constraints that faces Aggregate Industries at Straitgate Farm. Town Farm material does not need to be transported 23 miles between quarry face and processing plant, neither does it need to be worked and hauled using equipment and HGVs fuelled with expensive HVO. 

And yet, even without these cost constraints, Heidelberg is not currently able to make the numbers work at the Town Farm and Whiteball sites, both of which were mothballed in 2023. Last year, a Devon County Council Monitoring Report stated: 

As of 1st February 2023 it was confirmed that it has been necessary for Hanson to undertake a review of its Whiteball and Town Farm operations due to current economic conditions, in order to cut production capacity and reduce overheads and the decision has been made to temporarily mothball the Town Farm site until market conditions improve. 

This year's Monitoring Report tells the same story. Heidelberg says the operation is still closed. 

A number of issues will have conspired against Heidelberg: energy costs, red diesel rebate loss, interest rates, house-building slump, Liz Truss etc. The situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. Last week, the Mineral Products Association reported that "weakness persists for heavyside building materials": 

....ready-mixed concrete sales have plummeted to historically low levels, hit by the contraction in housebuilding, which compounded longer-term weaknesses in demand from new commercial offices and retail projects which have been subdued since 2017. 

...demand for primary aggregates has been supported by the requirement for bulk fill materials on major infrastructure projects, particularly from HS2, but the lack of significant new infrastructure projects outside of the country’s only major rail scheme remains a concern.

The Construction Products Association says the sector is heading for a worse recession this year than previously expected.

Aggregate Industries will have been cock-a-hoop last year to have finally won the keys to plunder the green fields of Straitgate Farm, but, at a meeting last month, the company admitted that economic conditions are not currently conducive to the viability of Straitgate, and that once the permission is implemented the site could be mothballed.

Questioned more on the subject, the company would not be drawn further:

... we have 10 years from the date of commencement to extract the mineral and that remains our intention.

However, even with a fair wind, it’s hard to see Aggregate Industries ever making the figures work for the site – given the gargantuan haulage distances involved and the HVO fuel premium.

But hey. If the company has backed itself into an uneconomic corner, it has no-one but itself to blame; no-one forced the company to process the Straitgate material 23 miles away – a 46-mile round trip for every load of as-dug material, material that includes a 20% waste factor – or to work the site and haul material using expensive HVO fuel. It came up with those ideas all by itself. 

As far as we’re concerned, however, the writing has been on the wall for some time. We’ve been questioning the viability of the site since long before this early post in 2012 – pointing to the fact that the company has access to little more than 5% of the material first thought possible, and asking What is AI’s bottom line, because it surely can’t be profit?

In fact, so concerned were we for Aggregate Industries' financial wellbeing – haha – we even created a viability label. Given the amount the company will have spent on winning those green-field keys – after a decade of fees to consultants and lawyers – the company should have perhaps heeded our advice.

But when did Aggregate Industries ever listen to Joe Public?

Denmark passes new law to recycle more building materials

Denmark aims to increase the recycling of construction materials: https://t.co/N1mgcHtlAn #sandcrisis

— Vince Beiser (@VinceBeiser) April 30, 2024

The Danish government has approved new legislation mandating recycling plans for buildings exceeding 250m2 scheduled for demolition. The Danish Minister for the Environment warns: 

We can’t keep extracting sand and gravel.