Aggregate Industries has submitted a new planning application to quarry sand and gravel in Devon – despite not yet implementing its permitted plans to quarry Straitgate Farm, and despite complaining that current economic conditions mean its plans for Straitgate may need to be mothballed.
Today, Devon County Council validated the company’s application to quarry land south west of Penslade Cross, DCC/4424/2025, an extension to its quarry at Hillhead near Uffculme, that is expected to yield 3.25 million tonnes over a 20-year period:
Proposed extension of Hillhead quarry for the winning and working of sand and gravel with restoration using imported inert fill, inclusive of a new internal haul road and the retention of the existing mineral processing facilities
The land is owned by Aggregate Industries, and has the same type of material that underlies Straitgate. In total, there are thought to be some 23 million tonnes at Penslade, 8 million tonnes of which are allocated in the Devon Minerals Plan. The site sits a short distance from the company's processing plant.
Aggregate Industries’ planning application for Penslade has been expected for some time.
In 2021, the company was granted permission to drill boreholes around Penslade to monitor the watertable. At the Straitgate appeal, it became clear that the company had told Devon County Council that an application would be submitted in 2023. However, only in September 2024 did the company issue a newsletter inviting locals to a drop-in event the following month to publicise its plans.
In this newsletter, the company reminded us – despite having won permission to quarry Straitgate – that:
Hillhead Quarry is the main source of sand and gravel in Devon and is Aggregate Industries’ only sand and gravel quarry in the south west.
The proposed Hillhead extension is identified as a minerals allocation in the Devon Minerals Plan as the replacement resource for the existing Hillhead sand and gravel quarry, which on current production rates has permitted reserves until c. 2028/9. We are starting the planning process for our Hillhead extension now in order to allow sufficient time to enable an orderly and planned transition of mineral working to the new extension area to take place in c.2028/9.
Clearly any material won from Straitgate in the intervening period – which is only permitted to be processed at Hillhead – does not figure in those timescales. Earlier this year, the company won permission for another 460,000 tonnes of sand and gravel at Hillhead, which will see it through until this new application is decided.
Ever since Aggregate Industries moved its sand and gravel processing operation to Hillhead back in 2018 – after it was forced to move its operations away from Blackhill on Woodbury Common, part of the East Devon Pebblebed Heaths in the East Devon AONB – it has made economic and environmental sense to source raw material closer to the processing plant. It made no sense to source material from Straitgate, 23 miles away. Given we have a new application for Penslade, alongside the as yet unimplemented permission for Straitgate, perhaps the penny has finally dropped.
At the Public Inquiry deciding the fate of Straitgate – with its barely 1 million tonnes – the Planning Inspectors chose to ignore the 23 million tonnes of sand and gravel sitting at Penslade, arguing there was "a shortage of sand and gravel in Devon", and writing:
82. Although development of the allocated site west of Penslade Cross would contribute significantly to supply, there is no immediate prospect of this coming forward, and our decision must be based on the current situation with respect to sand and gravel supply.137. We have already noted that there is little prospect of the allocated site at west of Penslade Cross coming forward in the near future. Therefore, any advantage that that site would have over the appeal site in terms of its proximity to Hillhead Quarry is not material to our decision.
And yet, just two years on, a planning application for Penslade has indeed come forward – as we all knew it would – for 20-years’ worth of material.
So, clearly, there is no shortage of sand and gravel in Devon, and – as we have argued for the last two decades – zero need for mineral from Straitgate Farm.
