Wight Building Materials is a joint venture between Eurovia and Aggregate Industries.
Last week, onthewight reported:
Restoration work at an Isle of Wight quarry with tens of thousands of tonnes of fill material will continue for two more years following a council decision.
In justifying its decision for Wight Building Materials’ Hale Manor Quarry, an officer wrote:
The submitted information states that the downturn in the economy caused by rising interest rates and the cost of living over 2022/23 has caused the slowing rate of restoration for the quarry. Therefore, the restoration scheme cannot be completed by the 2024 deadline.
Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time that a deadline linked to Aggregate Industries has come and gone.
In the past, the word deadline meant something:
a line drawn within or around a prison that a prisoner passes at the risk of being shot
a line that does not move
To Aggregate Industries et al., a deadline seems to mean nothing more than a guideline.
But we mustn’t be too harsh. Aggregate Industries and other mineral companies are clearly feeling the economic pain – as was made perfectly clear to us earlier in the year, when a representative from Aggregate Industries explained why the company intends to mothball Straitgate Farm immediately following implementation of the planning permission.
