This has been a long battle to try and reverse County Labour’s onslaught on rural areas…

It started about 2 years ago with proposals to quarry nearly 30 new sites across Staffordshire and, as always as history shows over the last 28 years, Labour County Councils sat back and watched more of our countryside and rural communities prepare for mass excavations and thousands of gravel lorries tearing up country roads.

The very start of the campaign to reverse Labour’s quarry madness

But after a long campaign involving hundreds of people and a policy reversal I managed to get into the election Manifesto which saw a new Conservative County Council last year, the trend to do more and more quarrying is finally over. 

Avoiding new quarry sites was all about the tonnage quota of sand and gravel that the West Midlands region contributes to the national need and, in turn, what Staffordshire as one of the six strategic authorities in the West Midlands contributes to that regional quota.

So, when we won Staffordshire last June we followed through on policy to reduce Staffordshire’s unfair and ridiculous 65% share which had grown constantly under Labour over their 28 years running our county. Problem was, if we do less others have to do more and whilst Staffordshire was providing that two thirds share, the next biggest contributor was only providing one tenth of the total for the region.

Not as simple as just changing our policy, but today, after much negotiation with the other Authorities, failures, short lived successes and threats by us of Judicial Review, the decision was made jointly to reduce Staffordshire’s sand and gravel contribution by 10million tonnes.

That means that when the County’s Planning Committee look at new applications for quarrying they will also have regard to the overall need meaning with 10million less tonnes to find it can be done by the current quarrying and the odd extension to two or three existing sites elsewhere in Staffordshire.

A big win which marks the start of a downward trend in aggregate extraction unless of course Labour manage to prize Staffordshire back from us in future elections. Good grief.

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