Villages defeat gravel pit plan (From The Oxford Times)

Villages defeat gravel pit plan

6:48pm Tuesday 25th November 2008 in Search By Chris Walker

Villagers who defeated plans for a massive gravel pit said it showed what could be achieved if neighbours banded together.

Residents of three villages in West Oxfordshire pulled together to protest against the proposal by Hanson Aggregates to extract 1.55 million tones of sand and gravel over eight years from a 146 acre site at Stonehenge Farm, near Standlake.

Oxfordshire county councillors had been recommended to approve the application after the Environment Agency raised no objections on flooding grounds.

But villagers from Northmoor, Moreton and Bablockhythe, backed by Witney MP and Conservative Party leader David Cameron, raised fears that 10-metre high bunds of earth could exacerbate the risk of flooding in the area.

Councillors voted eight to six against granting planning permission.

Protest group chairman Julie Hankey said: “It just shows if a community does get together you can defeat even a big conglomerate like Hanson.

“The gravel pits were a good employer after the war but there comes a point where enough is enough and we want to have a bit of dry land left around here.”

The victory was celebrated by residents who gathered in the Red Lion pub, in Northmoor, while Mrs Hankey revealed that she had received a bottle of Champagne on her doorstep yesterday morning.

It is the second time the Oxfordshire Upper Thames Residents Against Gravel Extraction (Outrage) protest group has defeated an application for gravel extraction on the site in the past 20 years.

Plans by Amey Roadstone Construction were thrown out in the late 1980s.

At Monday’s meeting, the council’s planning implementation manager Rob Dance had urged councillors to approve the proposals.

Mr Dance said the council would have a fight on its hands convincing a planning inspector to uphold its refusal if the Environment Agency had no objections on flooding grounds.

Hanson said yesterday it was considering an appeal.

Officers wanted to pursue the application as the authority only has 2.6 years' worth of land left to develop for sand and gravel extraction, with Government guidelines calling for a landbank of seven years.

Eynsham county councillor Charles Mathew revealed that 45 per cent of land in the lower Windrush and Evenlode valleys had already been excavated, with 95 per cent of the county council’s land and gravel supplies coming from the area in the past three years.

The area suffered badly with flooding in July last year and businesses on the nearby Park Farm Industrial Estate feared being flooded again if the Hanson plan went ahead.

cwalker@oxfordmail.co.uk