Object

Nottinghamshire Minerals Local Plan Publication Version

Representation ID: 176

Received: 10/10/2019

Respondent: Mick George

Legally compliant? Yes

Sound? No

Duty to co-operate? No

Representation Summary:

Policy SP5 The Built, Historic and Natural Environment
1. MGL considers the policy and its supporting text to be deficient in a number of respects. These include statements relating to agricultural land quality and infrastructure. Policy SP5 does not deal with potential conflicts between different policy areas, or provides inaccurate statements or does not provide advice on where the balance lies when considering such conflicts.
2. Agricultural land quality (paragraphs 3.56 & 3.57) – the major concern is the conflict between a biodiversity led restoration policy approach, the need for mineral and the need to conserve best and most versatile soils. Apart from saying that the loss of agricultural land to wetland can be managed (paragraph 3.57) and that a balance can be found between mineral need and protection of the resource (paragraph 3.56) the plan is silent on how this can be achieved and what policy position would be taken when loss of agricultural land is unavoidable.
3. MGL believes what is needed is a statement about the level of acceptable losses of best and most versatile soils (say, limited to less than 20 ha) and an indication of how to minimise such losses even if this should be at the expense of less wetland habitat. The plan should also say that if restoration schemes can demonstrate that soil grade can be preserved so there is no permanent loss of agricultural land or its quality, then the policy preference for development of poorer quality land over higher quality land does not apply.
4. Paragraph 3.63 has the potential to conflict with other legislation and should be deleted. Conflict between most types of infrastructure and mineral is handled by the Mining Code and preserves the rights of land and mineral owners to receive compensation for the loss of mineral rights. This is a purely commercial consideration and should be avoided in the planning system since imposing standoffs for mineral from infrastructure can result in the rights of landowners being compromised. The procedure is that a mining company can serve a Notice of Approach to an undertaker to exercise mineral rights to extraction, and it is open to the undertaker to issue a counter notice and pay compensation or to otherwise act such as move the infrastructure. This applies to most pipelines, powerlines and even railways. If government wishes to override existing mineral rights the state must compulsorily acquire those mineral rights. This is an area where it does not behove the mpa to become involved and may be counterproductive in that it may strip landowners of legitimate rights and lead to unnecessary sterilisation of mineral. The text should be deleted.
5. The reason for the proposed changes to supporting text is that it is not justified or effective.

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