Remember all the fuss about the cattle crossing – first raised here in 2017, and mentioned numerous times since?
The subject of the crossing was covered at the Public Inquiry, and the Planning Inspectors subsequently ruled that mineral extraction at Straitgate Farm is contingent upon the implementation of planning permission 20/2542/FUL, a permission secured by Aggregate Industries from East Devon District Council in 2021, for a "New access to the B3174 Exeter Road to provide a livestock crossing incorporating holding pens."
Condition 19 of Aggregate Industries' permission to quarry Straitgate says:
No soil stripping in Phase 1 of the development hereby approved shall be undertaken unless the cattle crossing permitted by East Devon District Council permission ref. 20/2542/FUL has been fully implemented and brought into operation in accordance with the conditions of that permission.
The Inspectors granting permission for the quarry spelt out the reason for this:
109. Material to this appeal proposal is a planning permission granted by East Devon District Council (EDDC) for a new access to the B3174 Exeter Road to provide a livestock crossing incorporating holding pens. At the time of the Inquiry this permission had not been implemented. However, no cogent evidence was presented to suggest that it would not be implemented. From the details of this permission submitted to the Inquiry it is clear that this livestock crossing arrangement will enable a more direct, efficient and therefore safe movement of livestock when they need to cross the road which is of benefit to the livestock, farmer and other highway users.
However, as we posted last year, Aggregate Industries mucked up. Permission 20/2542/FUL could not be implemented as it stood because some nitwit from the company had put the red-line planning boundary in the wrong location, as the District Council later confirmed:
I have written to Aggregate Industries drawing their attention to this issue and recommending that they address this issue through a further application.
Overlooking that inconvenient detail, the livestock crossing permission, granted on 21 June 2021, was itself subject to conditions, the first of which said :
1. The development hereby permitted shall be begun before the expiration of three years from the date of this permission and shall be carried out as approved. (Reason - To comply with section 91 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 as amended by Section 51 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004).
Today, three years have passed.
A further application has not been made. The development has not been implemented. Parroting a famous sketch: The application is no more. It has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its maker. It is an ex-application.
But that’s not the end of the story. In desperation, Aggregate Industries will now lower itself to more brutal tactics. To negate the need for the livestock crossing, and hopefully thereby to persuade Devon County Council to drop the Inspectors’ condition, the company’s ability to implement its permission to quarry Straitgate Farm will now be contingent upon foisting more pain and suffering on local people. The company will attempt to evict the tenant farmers and their children from their home – a home that has been in the same family more than 80 years – and to close down their successful dairy operation.
The words heartless and bastards might spring to mind.
But fortunately, and as the company itself acknowledged many years ago, the tenants have "the benefit of an Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 Tenancy Agreement."
tenancies under the 1986 Act continue to exist because they are difficult to terminate, and because tenants have powerful rights of succession, allowing their close relatives to succeed them.
What pain and suffering would befall this multinational cement bully should any eviction not be successful and implementation of the permission not be possible? Is there an urgent need for sand and gravel from Straitgate? Are the minerals in fact needed at all, given the millions of tonnes of similar material available to the company next to its processing plant at Hillhead also allocated in the Devon Minerals Plan? Answers: Insignificant, no and no.
To prove the point, earlier this year, the company admitted that economic conditions are not currently conducive to the viability of mineral working at Straitgate, and that once the permission is implemented the site could be mothballed.
