Issue - meetings

Report by the Assistant Director of Strategic Infrastructure and Planning (PN7).

The report sets out the proposed development for which planning permission has been applied under application no. MW.0075/20. Having considered the application against the development plan and other material considerations including consultation responses and representations received the officer recommendation is that subject to the completion of a section 106 Agreement for the provision of a permissive path and to conditions to be determined by the Assistant Director of Strategic Infrastructure and Planning it be approved.

It is RECOMMENDED that subject to the applicant first entering into a section 106 agreement for the provision of a permissive path to provide a link between Thrupp Lane and the disused railway line as part of the restoration of the site that planning application no. MW.0075/20 be APPROVED subject to conditions to be determined by the Assistant Director for Strategic Infrastructure and Planning to include those set out in Annex 1 to the report PN7.

Approved subject to the following:

Additional Conditions to secure:

Provision of wheelwashing facilities

Details of screening for the site to be submitted for prior approval (amendment to Condition 10).

The period for commencing the development be reduced from 5 years to 3 (amendment to Condition 2).

Informative that Tuckwells work co-operatively with the Radley Lakes Trust on implementation of the Radley Lakes Masterplan

The Committee considered an application (PN7) setting out proposed use of the existing processing plant site to process sand and gravel from the nearby 94 acre Review of Old Mineral Permission (ROMP) site along with installation of a field conveyor system to the site boundary and ancillary facilities for the transportation, storage and processing of the sand and gravel and the use of the existing haul road.

Mr Periam presented the report.

Roger Thomas accepted that, if the Nyatt mineral was going to be extracted, then it would need to be processed but there were, though, some big unanswered questions about this application. Firstly, why was this permission needed now? Extraction wasn’t planned to start until perhaps 2025 so why was this permission needed so far in advance? To an onlooker, it didn’t make sense and the officer report did not help much in that regard. In due course, the Committee would be considering a ROMP application for modern planning conditions to cover the Nyatt extraction. That application had to be accompanied by an Environmental Statement covering all the environmental impacts of the Nyatt quarrying, including processing but, because the processing arrangements were being dealt with separately, they wouldn’tt be covered by the Statement which again made no sense. Oxfordshire County Council had requested an Environmental Statement for the present application, but as Tuckwell had successfully appealed that the environmental impacts of this application hadn’t been fully assessed. Arrangements for extraction and processing were, in effect, a single operation so why were they being considered in isolation from each other? This was bound to cause problems as the conveyor only ran to the edge of Tuckwell’s land so how would material be moved from the quarry to the start of the conveyor, a distance of around a kilometre? All this meant that it was impossible to see things in the round so how could the public be assured that, in terms of the environment and the community, this was the best option for processing? An Environmental Statement would have looked at alternatives but this application did not do that. If the decision was to grant permission then it should be made very clear that the permission was entirely without prejudice to future decisions on the best processing arrangements and all options for processing needed to be reviewed, once the full ROMP application for the quarrying and its Environmental Statement were available.

Speaking for Radley Parish Council Richard Dudding advised that if minerals were to be extracted in the ROMP area the Parish Council’s view had always been that the Tuckwells yard would be the most suitable location for servicing the operations and processing the minerals once extracted. Nevertheless. They had concerns about the application and a year ago had registered an objection to it. Since then there had been developments namely that it had become clearer that Tuckwells had a genuine intention to extract minerals at Nyatt. Secondly county officers have said that this application for processing should be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 22