12 December 2012
At the Essex County Council meeting on Tuesday 11th December, the authority rubberstamped its Minerals Local Plan Submission Document.
Neither the public nor local parish and district councillors were allowed to speak or ask questions at the meeting.
This draft of the Minerals Plan is the last before a public hearing due in autumn 2013. It allocates over half (56%) of the entire allocation of extraction for Essex to be in Braintree District - a total of 22.78 million tonnes to be dug up from the countryside by the year 2029 - from an Essex total of 40.824 million tonnes.
A particularly high concentration of sites is in and around Rivenhall Airfield, which if fully developed would extend Bradwell Quarry almost to Coggeshall Hamlet, creating a vast "moonscape" across the countryside. The 5 site extensions to the quarry allocated in the plan (A3 - A7) are additional to site A2 which the authority granted against local community wishes recently, and which was an unallocated site, contrary to ECC's own existing Minerals Plan. On its own, site A7 covers 95 hectares.
The two other Braintree District sites are the controversial proposal at Broadfield Farm (Rayne) covering 90 hectares and a site that did not make the previous short list, but which has mysteriously now been accepted at Coleman's Farm (Rivenhall) alongside the A12.
The Plan will go to public consultation from 17th January to 28th February 2013 - but overturning it at this stage is difficult due to the way in which it has to be proven that the Plan is technically "unsound". There will be a Hearing before a planning inspector in the autumn of 2013.
Cllr. James Abbott, Green Party District Councillor for Bradwell, Silver End and Rivenhall said
"Once again Essex County Council has given big landowners and developers what they want. And once again ECC has comprehensively ignored local people and their representatives. They even rubberstamped this decision at a meeting yesterday where they prevent any member of the public or non-ECC councillors from speaking to raise concerns or points of information that could assist the decision making process.
Such a bar is an insult to the principles of democracy - a bar which the Green Party is campaigning to change.
In approving this new Plan for submission, the County Council has for Braintree District completely ignored the vast majority of the representations made by residents, local parish councils - and Braintree District Council. It is the same pattern of behaviour as we saw for the Rivenhall Airfield waste plant and incinerator application, where ECC gave consent despite there being over 900 people, organisations and local councils objecting compared to one letter of support.
We acknowledged at earlier stages of the new Minerals Plan that Braintree District should take its fair share of minerals extraction, and so sites A3 and A4 at Rivenhall Airfield were accepted as extensions to the existing Bradwell Quarry as these had the least impacts. But sites additional to those were opposed because of impacts on the countryside and local communities.
To propose 56% of the total Essex allocation in one district is clearly not a "fair share" and is completely the opposite of ECC's own policy in the new Plan to "provide for the best possible geographic dispersal of sand and gravel across the county".
If this Plan is enacted, it guarantees that HGVs carrying sand and gravel will be more concentrated on to the already congested A120 and A12 as well as the likelyhood of some HGVs diverting through on narrow rural roads.
We will ensure in the New Year that as many local residents as possible know about the proposals and the ways in which they can make representations."
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