Issue - meetings

Report by the Director for Planning & Place (PN7).

This is a Section 73 application to amend certain conditions on an existing consent. The site is an asphalt plant located adjacent to the railway, north of Banbury. Aggregate is imported mainly by rail and used to produce asphalt which is exported by road. These operations currently take place from 4am until 7pm, with overnight working only permitted with the prior approval of the Minerals Planning Authority. The applicant has applied to remove this restriction so that the plant could be operated through the night on any night, without needing to seek additional consent. They have provided a noise assessment to demonstrate that this would not cause unacceptable noise impacts and have proposed an additional noise barrier. It is proposed that overnight working would take place occasionally, rather than every night.

It is also proposed to relocate the existing office and associated buildings within the site. The current consent dates from 2003 and therefore there are some further conditions which are no longer relevant and which the applicant has applied to be removed.

There have been objections from 11 members of the public as well as the County Councillor, Banbury Town Council and Cherwell District Council. The main concern raised is noise. There were also some concerns about HGV movements and trains. However, the applicant has confirmed that there would be no increase in HGV movements and no change to the timing or number of trains. ??

Subject to a new routeing agreement first being entered into to secure the existing routeing provisions with additional restrictions to the route for night time HGV movements, it is RECOMMENDED that planning permission for Application MW.0117/18 be approved subject to conditions as set out in Annex 1 as amended by Annex 2 to the report PN7.

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Deferred for further discussions with the Applicant.

The Committee considered (PN7) a Section 73 application to amend certain conditions on an existing consent at an asphalt plant located adjacent to the railway, north of Banbury. Aggregate was imported mainly by rail and used to produce asphalt which was then exported by road. Operations currently took place from 4am until 7pm, with overnight working only permitted with the prior approval of the Minerals Planning Authority. The applicant had applied to remove this restriction so that the plant could be operated through the night on any night, without needing to seek additional consent. They had provided a noise assessment to demonstrate that this would not cause unacceptable noise impacts and had proposed an additional noise barrier. It is proposed that overnight working would take place occasionally, rather than every night. It was also proposed to relocate the existing office and associated buildings within the site. The current consent dated from 2003 and therefore there were some further conditions which were no longer relevant and which the applicant had applied to be removed.

Presenting the report along with further information on the published addenda Mary Hudson reported 2 further objections from residents. She then responded to Members’ questions:

Councillor Phillips – since 2004 there had been 8 requests for extended working with the last being in 2014 although there had been one last week but that had been to facilitate the company’s assessment work. It would be reasonable to expect that there would be more requests.

Councillor Johnston – complaints had been received from the south of the site.

Councillor Gawrysiak – a new routeing agreement would be required with a more restrictive route for night traffic as required by Condition 6 and as set out in paragraph 72 of the report.  Overnight traffic was required to access the motorway via Hennef Way.

Mr Shepley with Sam Lankester also attending then addressed the Committee on behalf of the applicant. Tarmac was the UK’s leading sustainable building materials and construction solutions business and had operated at the Banbury site for over 30 years currently employing 14 people full-time, predominantly from the local area. As the plant had expanded and the need for asphalt in the local area increased a number of variations to the plant’s operating hours had been made over the years, with the last granted in 2003 to permit operation of the plant between the hours of 4am – 7pm Monday to Saturday and 8am to 5pm on Sundays. Overnight working was permitted outside of these hours, provided that prior written agreement had first been obtained from the minerals planning authority, each time such working was required. Tarmac took their responsibility to the local community very seriously and, since 2003, their records showed there had only been a single complaint in 2018 from a local resident to operations at the plant. That had been resolved quickly and successfully by Tarmac. He pointed out that the report by county officers stated no complaints had been received by the Minerals Planning  ...  view the full minutes text for item 17