Notts County Council and Tarmac - A Special Relationship

Tarmac has not submitted the information required about their Bulcote Farm planning application by Nottinghamshire County Council by the deadline of 31 August. Is this the end of Tarmac’s plans to turn our lovely riverside into a quarry? Unfortunately not. While the “Gunthorpe allocation” remains in the County Minerals Plan, Tarmac or anyone else can apply to mine this site.

We have argued repeatedly that the site is not suitable for quarrying – there are too many risk factors here quite apart from the destruction of the lovely riverside area. So we are committed to getting the “Gunthorpe allocation” removed from the Plan.

During the past four years, a lot of nasty things have crawled out of the woodwork while we have been researching the practical problems of the site and investigating the legality of the procedures undertaken by the County Council as they steam-rolled the “Gunthorpe allocation” into the Plan, against all the evidence of its unsuitability.

We believe that there should be a full investigation into the whole affair.  There are many questions that need answering.

There is a special relationship between Tarmac and the County Council; Tarmac is the Council’s chosen partner in the Highways Partnership that maintains the County’s roads.

We know that the County Council has regular meetings with Tarmac to discuss their current mining activities and proposals for new ones in the County. We know that the County Council has undertaken at public expense technical investigations to help Tarmac with its application for the Bulcote Farm site – investigations that should be the financial responsibility of the applicant. We know that the Council has agreed to Tarmac’s request to keep secret certain proposals in connection with the ongoing Bulcote Farm planning application – contrary to rules about public access to all information on live applications. We know that reports made by the Council’s Environment Department to the Minerals Plan public inquiry and to Council Committees about Tarmac’s application have been “economical with the truth”. We know … well, lots of other things – all of which require detailed investigation.

That is the trouble with special relationships. You never know what fine messes they will get you into.