Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

Thank you for your letter of 27 March 2000 inviting QPA to submit further evidence on the above mentioned study. I have been asked by our members to make the following response on their behalf.

QPA is the principal Trade Association representing the UK aggregates industry. Our members produce nearly 95% of aggregates quarried in the UK and are thus totally dependent on the efficient working of the planning system for the planning permissions that enable aggregate production to be maintained. We have the following comments to offer on the themes listed at Annexe A of the RCEP paper:-

Section 1     Environmental Sustainability

In today's environmentally conscious society, sustainable development is a key concept to which all types of development, including minerals development, must take account. Sustainable development, has many definitions, the most popular and relevant:-

"Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".

        (Our Common Future - Brundtland Report 1987)

This concept was first embraced by the UK Government in a document entitled "This Common Inheritance", which was published in 1990. Of particular note is paragraph 4.6 of this report, which states:

"The Government is convinced that economic development and environmental protection need not be irrevocably opposing principles, but can complement each other - both are necessary".

In terms of minerals development, there would thus appear to be two aspects to the concept of sustainable development. Firstly the need to husband resources so that economic development can be facilitated and thereby the needs of the present be met, and secondly, the protection of the environment so that future generations will be able to meet their own needs.

On the subject of the need to husband resources so that economic development can be facilitated, and specifically in terms of aggregates consumption, there is not a problem. The Verney Committee estimated in 1976 that Great Britain had adequate aggregate resources to last 30,000 years. A more localised look at aggregates resources in the South-East region in 1988 estimated that there were enough sand and gravel resources left in the region to last some 500 years at current rates of extraction. We are thus not going to run out of aggregates in the short term and in any case, when aggregates are used in construction, they are not destroyed in the same way as oil and gas are when they are used. By and large, aggregates will always be available for re-use when the structure or road is obsolete, in the form of crushed concrete or recycled roadstone.

The second aspect of sustainable development - that is the need to protect the environment - is far less problematic for the aggregates industry. In the first place, aggregates quarrying is a very minor land user. DETR figures show that in 1994, aggregate quarrying occupied 0.3% of England's land area. In contrast, urban/suburban uses accounted for 10.1% coverage and managed farmland, 68% of coverage. In the second place, the aggregates industry, and in particular, the sand and gravel industry, has an excellent record of restoring sites back to the same state, or in many cases to be a better condition that before.

In recent years, members of the Quarry Products Association have created well over 100 Sites of Scientific Interest on former mineral sites whilst having in their expert care, a further 70 or so SSSI's. Moreover, over the past 5 years, the aggregates industry has planted almost 3 million trees and is now the third largest tree planting agency in Great Britain, after the Forestry Commission and the Highways Agency.

The aggregates industry is committed to continually improving its environmental performance and has supported the principle of the past record of working and restoration of an operator being a legitimate criteria for assessing his future planning applications.

With regard to the specific questions:-

a)       of course the concept of sustainable development has had favourable consequences for the protection of the environment.

b)       It is the remit of the UK planning system to balance environmental objectives with other issues through the democratic local government process. We believe the process works well in this respect and needs no amendment.

c)       It is difficult to believe in the case of quarrying every aspect of which is highly regulated that any more or changed regulations are required.

d)       Land use planning no longer has a presumption in favour of development - there is now a Section 54 A presumption only in favour of development which accords with the provision of the development plan. Development plans themselves are now subject to full environmental and sustainability appraisals - no further changes, in this respect are warranted.

e)       With regard to the arguments between "predict and provide" or 'plan, monitor and manage', it is too early to comment in respect of aggregates planning until MPG6 is both revised and implemented, in 2001.

f)       We do have concerns regarding the cumulative impact of developments in the context of environmental planning. Whilst there is evidence to suggest that this should be followed through, it is difficult to understand how this can be achieved without severely hindering development. The current planning process, as we all know, is becoming cumbersome, and takes considerable time, and should a planning application have to provide evidence on the cumulative impact of other developments close to it, then the system could potentially grind to a halt. A system of phasing of release of development plan allocations could be the answer.

g)       There is no lack of resources to deal with environmental planning but in line with our answer to question (c) there may be is a case for a carefully designed, deregulated, simpler system.

h)       We do not agree, generally, that the achievement of environmental sustainability should depend on permitted uses being time limited. We appreciate that in our industry when there is a finite resource at a site to be worked, then a timescale is sensible, but in terms of the general built environment, we cannot see what this will achieve. The sustainability of a project should be determined at the outset.

a)&b)      Land use, planning and environmental sustainability will certainly become more complex and there could be a tendency towards micro instead of macro planning. There is certainly a belief that some of the Unitary Development Authorities tend to focus too much on their administrative area without considering land use in a regional context. There are, of course, agencies such as the Environment Agency who do work on a larger geographical scale which in terms of environmental sustainability is probably moving in the right direction, but from a planning perspective, could be at cross purpose with the planning system. It is sometimes very difficult to correlate mpa boundaries with those of the Environment Agency, with Government offices and with EPRs.

c)      On a national basis, we appear to have had a history of not having a co-ordinated approach, for example on transport strategy, and developing more sustainable forms of transport. As we made clear in our earlier response, caution should be exercised in extending the land use planning system to issues, it is ill suited to being a major player in, such as water quality, energy provision, climate change etc.

d)      We do believe that geographical information systems can contribute to environmental planning. Simplistically, it does enable a wide range of data to be analysed and these systems can place a different emphasis on data which otherwise has little meaning when not placed in a geographical context. At present, we would suggest that GIS is predominantly being used at a local/regional level, and many Planning Authorities are beginning to use these systems for land use planning. In addition, there are national organisation such as the Land Registry and English Nature who are also beginning to use GIS to good effect.

e)      There can be no case for extending the land use planning system to control agricultural and forestry. This could require a huge increase in resources, could lead to planners having to judge cropping patterns and would be hard to justify in any circumstances. Is whether a field is cropped for rape or sweetcorn really an environmental issue? Since the system is already creaking, with severe delays both in the development plan process and in development control, there can be no case for broadening its scope.

a) - c)      As a general observation, we believe that the existing system is 'fit for purpose', although from our perspective, there are a large number of interested parties/consultees that we have to deal with in the planning process. Whilst it sometimes can be frustrating when having to deal with a number of different agencies, we are not sure whether this could be improved if, for example, all of the planning functions were re-organised on a regional basis. The one advantage for us would be that all of the skills necessary to determine, for example, a planning application could be housed within one organisation but how you stop such organisation from becoming too bureaucratic?

d)       Planning delays are getting worse and worse. This is a serious cost to business and to society. There is no reason why a thorough system cannot still be a speedy system.

e)      It is certainly practical to have parallel decisions on planning and pollution control. What is needed, however, is much better co-ordination of the policy directions of the 2 agencies.

f)      There is little, if any integration of transport planning and land use planning at present - there is much scope for improvement. Although, for instance much is said about the desirability of increasing of movement of freight by rail, little is possible by way of specific implementation.

g)      Economic instruments are a blunt instrument which are ill suited to achieve real, local environmental improvements and which can have unforeseen and unfortunate consequences such as the landfill tax. The newly proposed aggregates tax, although purporting to be an environmental tax will in fact only yield enough cash to relieve National Insurance payments with nothing left over for any of the promised environmental benefits. Such taxes are neither desirable, nor feasible.

h)      Betterment taxes have a distinguished record of failure over the years and in respect of quarrying are pointless. When the mineral is extracted from a site, there is no betterment in land value - assuming a high standard of restoration - the land will return to its original or more usually a lower value. As we made clear in our initial response we totally reject any suggestions that the system of planning gain should be encouraged or widened. What is already happening is tantamount to the buying and selling of planning permissions despite the good advice in DoE Circular 1/97. It is entirely wrong to regard the practice of community benefits/planning gain as a convenient system for topping up shortfalls in mpa budgets or as an alternative form of development land tax.

i)      Sustainability is not relevant to the issues raised here which is entirely about rights of landowners within the constraints of the post-47 Act planning system.

Given the comments above, we feel that this is an issue of great concern. The social dimension will come into play, and if the importance of environmental protection is targeted at all levels, then over time there will be a cultural change in how we live and work.

We feel that the social dimension is going to be one of the key factors in the success of environmental sustainability as the alternative of dramatically increasing legislation and regulation will lead us to bureaucracy and red-tape, and may have a contrary effect than anticipated.

a)       However we are content with the present level of democracy in the planning process despite ever worsening delays. Moving the decision making level down to parish pump level could amount to the last straw in trying to retain effective decision making. There is no doubt that for strategic planning the most effective system was the 2 tier county/district system with the upper tier being the final arbiter.

b)      We do believe that most planning authorities do now make great efforts to consider public opinion in their decision making process and there is no case for further change which could substantially increase delays in the system.

c) & d)       We strongly support the relationship between international, national and local goals as arranged through EU, UK law and policy guidance and as translated into structure and local plans. We have misgivings at the role and influence of the regional planning system which still seems to have little effective, implementational role in the system. There is also little effective democracy at the regional level.

e)       It is now inevitable, with devolution that environmental planning regimes will differ in the 4 nation states. There is little or no prospect of any reversal of this political process.

f) & g)       We have the greatest respect for the planning inquiry process and see no need for change. Introduction of third party rights of appeal could bring the whole planning system to an effective halt.

At a local level, the existing appraisal methodologies appear to have their desired effect. The introduction of Environmental Impact Assessments does provide the appropriate information on individual development proposals, although there is probably a tendency to over-scope projects than is really necessary. However, at a regional level, we are not sure whether the existing process is adequate. We appreciate this is contrary to some of the points already raised above relating to bureaucracy and red-tape. For example, in the creation of a Structure Plan, are the overall environmental impacts of all the development proposals adequately addressed?

One area which has not been discussed is the use of Social Impact Assessments. There are regularly used by the larger international mining companies and could become an addition to EIAs.

Following the logic of this through, this could lead to, for example, environmental capacity appraisals being carried out, although we are unsure whether these can be done efficiently and objectively.

In preparing and producing all of this information, we would need to ensure that those people determining applications and development proposals are suitably qualified and have a thorough understanding of the various reports and assessments.

Finally, we would just like to draw attention to the experience and understanding the industry has gleaned over the past two years in relation to ISO 14001. Since the implementation of Environmental Management Systems and the move towards certification to ISO 14001, the industry has become far more aware of environmental impacts and how to manage them. We are doing further work on the social impacts of our business which will continue as part of our development of the Environment Management System. As an industry, we also need to fully understand the range of impacts our activities create. We are all fully conversant with addressing local impacts, and manage these well, which is borne out by the relatively few complaints our members receive about our operations.

Our successes at local level will need to be cascaded up to demonstrate the broader view of the impact of our industry, and during this process, we stress that we can contribute to the environment as has been demonstrated time and time again by, for example, our restoration schemes, biodiversity and general approach to mineral planning.

Conclusions
QPA thus firmly believe there is no crisis in the UK planning system, other than a need to streamline some of the process to cut delays, no philosophical difficulty in facilitating the aims of sustainable development and no need to widen the remit of planning to cover such issues as forestry or farming nor to provide third party rights of appeal.

We have no objection to this response being made public.

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