Posts from — February 2010

A few months ago I started a campaign to promote our county’s flag and encourage its wider use…

Staffordshire Flag to fly as Wave Ruler deploys for year long tour of duty

I think it could help the sense of identity here which in turn could lead to social benefits and more overt pride in our county.

There’s growing interest with more and more Staffordshire Flags flying and greater awareness that our county even has a flag… all English Counties do. I’ve even had interest from flag organisations based in America.

And this week the Staffordshire Flag is set to fly even higher for a wider audience across the world with one of the nation’s biggest naval ships deploying under Staffordshire colours on a year long tour which will take in Africa, South America, the Falklands and the Caribbean.

RFA Wave Ruler, under the command of Captain Shaun Jones, will set sail later this month and you can keep up with their progress here. The best of luck to the officers and crew.

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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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