Issue - meetings

Report by the Assistant Director Strategic Infrastructure and Planning (PN6).

As resolved at the meeting of the Planning and Regulation Committee on 8^th March 2021, the report provides an update on the progress with regard to the work on the application and Environmental Statement for the review of conditions for the ROMP areas DD1 and DD2.  It is recommended that the Planning and Regulation Committee’s conclusion from its meeting on 9^th September 2019 (Minute 39/19) that mineral working on the Radley ROMP site has permanently ceased be updated to reflect new information demonstrating an ongoing intention to continue mineral working on the Radley ROMP site and that the unserved Prohibition Order is revoked. 

It is RECOMMENDED that the Planning & Regulation Committee’s previous conclusion from its meeting on 9^th September 2019 (Minute 39/19) that mineral working on the Radley ROMP site has permanently ceased be rescinded and that the Prohibition Order of that date but not yet served is revoked.

Deferred to the July 2022 meeting of the Committee with the expectation being that the operator would by that time have submitted a ROMP application accompanied by an Environmental Statement for the whole of the Radley ROMP permissions area.

As resolved at the meeting of the Planning and Regulation Committee on 8^th March 2021, the Committee now considered a report (PN6) providing an update on progress with regard to the work on the application and Environmental Statement for the review of conditions for the ROMP areas DD1 and DD2.  

Having presented the report Mr Periam confirmed that be understood a partial order could be served.

Speaking on behalf the Friends of Radley Lakes Roger Thomas advised that although members of the Committee had received a number of detailed papers about this item which all looked very complicated and technical it was in fact very simple. The Radley ROMP site was covered by a number of separate mineral planning permissions, granted at different times between 1954 and 1992. Those different areas had different histories with some worked out many years ago, but never restored and others, where extraction had yet to even start - such as the Nyatt site, which was the subject of Item 7 on this agenda. Radley Parish Council was asking that a Prohibition Order be served on just two of these old permissions where extraction in both areas had been completed by 1979 at the latest. One had then been filled with waste but never properly restored and so a Prohibition Order would clarify the planning position and enable the County Council to require timely restoration.

The County Council’s was that a Prohibition Order could not be served on only part of a ROMP site whereas Government guidance said exactly the opposite and indeed went on to say that in some circumstances, probably including this one, there was a statutory duty on the authority to serve an order covering only part of a ROMP site. Obviously there had been some kind of misunderstanding over the legal position and he had hoped to have been able to discuss this with county officers before this meeting, but that hadn’t been possible. The Committee obviously would not want to ask officers to do anything which wasn’t supportable in law, so in his opinion there were two possible ways forward. One to amend its resolution so that the Council’s intention to serve a Prohibition Order on areas where future extraction was planned was revoked, while maintaining that intention to serve on the two areas where extraction had definitely ceased. The other approach would be to defer a decision to allow time for discussion between officers and interested parties in order to resolve apparently conflicting views of the legal position. This all mattered because if a Prohibition Order was not served on the land which he had referred to above then restoration of those areas might not take place until 2043 -   around 65 years after the completion of extraction and that quite simply was not how mineral planning was supposed to work.

Councillor Constance asked Mr Thomas to clarify the emphasis he had made regarding the cessation of work in those 2 areas in 1979 and that  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21