Object

Representation ID: 178

Received: 10/10/2019

Respondent: Mick George

Legally compliant? Yes

Sound? No

Duty to co-operate? No

Policy MP2: Sand and Gravel Provision
1. Bearing in mind the previous analysis of MP1 there is a shortfall in allocated and sites and MGL proposes the addition of its Flash Farm site to the list of sand and gravel allocations.
Proposed Site Allocation – Flash Farm (see plan No F18/15/01)
2. MGL has no comment about the specifics of the allocations except to reiterate the need for more provision in the form of new quarries and a more equitable spread of sites among the industry. Thus MGL wishes to promote is own site at Flash Farm, Averham. This site was allocated in the former abandoned Plan in 2016, and clearly retains a number of advantages which make it suitable for working. This means that it has no overriding adverse environmental impacts and the only reason it appears not to have been included in this plan is the change of approach to local plan provision following the County Council elections of 2017.
3. This site located on the A617 at Averham west of Newark contains 3.08 Million tonnes and would produce about 200,000 tonnes of high quality aggregate a year for markets to the north of Nottingham, Ashfield, Mansfield and possibly Derbyshire beyond. Some material is also likely to be sold in the Newark area.
4. In response to NCC’s call for sites in 2018 MGL submitted various environmental reports and working and restoration details to the Council to support its proposal of this site. These documents are assumed to be already in the Examination and are not repeated here. What follows is a summary of the environmental characteristics of the site and its advantages.
5. The environmental appraisals undertaken have raised no issues that would warrant refusal of the development proposals, which are in conformity with the emerging development plan and confirm that the site is eminently suitable as a Local Plan allocation.
6. The site is located partially within the western floodplain of the north-eastward flowing River Trent and consists of gravels and sandy gravels concealed in part by shallow deposits of alluvium. The mineral deposit is characterised by low fines content and high percentage of gravel. The gravel fraction is predominantly fine with occasional cobbles whilst the sand is medium grained and these consist primarily of quartz and quartzite with subordinate amounts of flint, chert and sandstone.
7. The site lies in the Trent Valley in the Trent Washlands Landscape Character Area and the proposed extraction area is largely flat lying at about 14m AOD and located in open countryside characterised by large fields, low hedges with sporadic hedgerow trees, and occasional blocks of woodland on higher ground to the north. It is also fairly isolated, with the property of Flash Farm itself, located 160 metres to the north. All other properties are at the villages of Averham and Kelham which are 540m and 660m to the south east and north east respectively.
The Flash Farm site comprises a number of agricultural fields, sub-divided primarily by fencing, under arable and pasture use.
9. The site is crossed by a 400 Kva overhead power line with three substantial stanchions within the land in question. The wider landscape is dominated by adverse detractors consisting of the Staythorpe Power Station (to the south) and power lines leading from it as well as the dominant flue stack from the sugar beet factory to the north-east.
10. As the mineral extraction area is not sub-divided by any hedgerows, the scheme of working therefore importantly does not require the removal of any sections of vegetation (i.e. hedgerow or trees) whatsoever.
11. The quarry has been designed to reinstate the land in a sensitive fashion seeking to apply best environmental practice and give practical effect to strategic government initiatives on protection of soil resources and habitat creation using importation of suitable inert material as a catalyst for the beneficial restoration of the land to be reinstated to its existing “best and most versatile” agricultural land status.
12. Moreover, the opportunity has afforded conditions to create bio-diversity action plan priority habitats such as species rich grassland and lowland wet grassland as well as some 2.3km of new hedgerows (which currently do not exist).
13. The proposed scheme of working has been devised to reflect current landscape improvement and nature conservation policies. Net biodiversity gain would be achieved through the creation of a cohesive network of new habitats, contributing to the Government’s commitment to halt the overall decline in biodiversity. The application site itself is currently of limited ecological value with a majority of the site consisting of intensively managed fields with very limited hedgerows of variable quality within the site itself.
14. Accordingly, the scheme provides a high standard of mitigation by delivering net gain in environmental capital and strategic bio-diversity networks. Such benefits to bio-diversity are requirement of the National Planning Policy Framework and Planning Practice Guidance as well as emerging Mineral Local Plan policies which contains a “bio-diversity led” philosophy for the restoration of quarry workings.
15. Given the site’s location the proposed scheme of working can readily provide effective protection against unreasonable noise and dust emissions with the site design carefully aimed to balance protection of the local environment with the requirement to extract and process mineral.
16. The site access will be directly onto the A617 upgrading an existing gated access. The A617 is part of the Strategic Highway Network and policy objectives (locally and nationally) support the use of such roads to transport goods and materials (including minerals).
17. The Flash Farm site lies to the west of Kelham Bridge which is ideally located to serve markets to the north and west. Without Flash Farm being present other quarries would have to transport material across Kelham Bridge to serve those same markets. Congestion around Kelham Bridge has been highlighted by the County Council and residents as being of concern although the A 617 is identified as part of the County’s Core Road Network. Accordingly, Flash Farm would have a neutral effect as movements west over the bridge would be balanced by movements in the other direction.
18. As such, MGL commends the Flash Farm site to the Examination as a site specific allocation.
19. The Reason for the proposed change is that the site allocation policy is contrary to national policy and guidance, is not justified and not effective.