County campaigns to end mineral madness

Offer to reduce Staffordshire quarry quota on the table but is it good enough?…

Well, things have moved on a long way in the last year. The previous Labour Administration paid no attention at all to keeping the amount of quarrying in Staffordshire under control.

Frankly, they were politically weak in rural areas and so weren’t bothered about the environmental or quality of life damage which has happened. And that has set, over many many years, a difficult precident which is hard to break.

But after much effort, including by hundreds of people in the Lichfield Rural East area, gradual progress is becoming entrenched. The result of that is a firm offer on the table to reduce aggregate extraction by just enough to negate the need for new quarries.

The process isn’t exactly straight forward and I think the quarrying industry have to big an influence bearing in mind they sit around a quasi democratic table (sort of) but are quick to reach for the legal challenge cheque book when things don’t go their way.

That table is the West Midlands Regional Assembly. The only democratic bit is the six top tier Authorities, including Staffordshire, which make up the West Midlands Region. The Government decide how much sand, gravel and crushed rock is needed nationally and then ’suggest’ what each region needs to find to make up the total.

In the past, the regional quota ’suggestion’ hasn’t been challenged because, under Labour, most of the quota has been dumped on us in Staffordshire with no opposition at all. The other five Authorities have got away lightly because of that and so it all just happened.

Now of course, that’s not the case. We said we wanted a cap on quarrying before we won the County in June and since then have more power to help make that happen. It’s becoming increasingly clear that if Labour had retained Staffordshire in June we’d have been looking at a further quota increase here from providing 65% of the entire regional contribution to probably around 70%.

The offer on the table now is about 55%. Just enough, I’m assured, of a reduction to avoid new quarries under the planning process. But it’s not as big a reduction as we think is fair. Recent independent reviews back that statement suggesting that 40 something would be a more appropriate figure giving that extra downward boost. The decision is whether to take what’s on offer now, get a result on avoiding new quarries or, alternatively, fight for that extra reduction of 10% and risk legal challenge from the aggregates industry.

We’ll be talking about that next week and sometime over the next two months we should know for certain where we are. It’s been a tough and long battle but it’s looking ok bearing in mind most people thought the new quarry proposals from 18 months ago were a done deal. I’ll write more shortly.

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