Our application:

Our planning application for the temporary extraction of minerals from some of the site at Ashley Manor Farm was submitted to Hampshire County Council in 2022.

We are currently responding to the Regulation 25 requests for additional information as part of the mineral planning application. This process involves some further surveys. Therefore, we have submitted the initial part of our response and will continue to work on other technical assessments over the summer months for submission in the Autumn.

When further information is provided to Hampshire County Council for the Regulation 25 requests, it is made public and the statutory consultees and the local community are informed. The statutory consultees and the local community are then able to comment on these changes, alterations and additional information in the consultation process.

The current consultation process completes at the end of May 2023. We will then submit further information later in the year and the consultation process will open again.

Please find the application, supporting documents and new information submitted here.

The details:

Further information has been provided to Hampshire County Council for the Regulation 25 requests in respect of Air Quality, Alternatives, Cultural Heritage, Hydrology & Hydrogeology, Landscape & Visual Impact, Traffic Impact Assessment and Development Proposal plans.

This information can be found summarised within a cover letter and the updated Environmental Statement (ES) which has been submitted, and we have provided a second version of the Flood Risk Assessment and an improved rights of way plan.

All documentation can be found here.

The updates to the ES, in terms of the relevant issues raised in the objections, are summarised as follows:

• Air quality in terms of impacts to human health such as the impact of silica dust (Chapter 5- Air Quality v2 of the ES);
• Air quality in terms of vehicle emissions (Chapter 5- Air Quality v2 of the ES);
• Alternatives in terms of best and most versatile agricultural land (Chapter 7- Alternatives v2);
• Cultural heritage in terms of listed buildings, setting and designated and non-designated heritage assets and the assessment of significance (Chapter 9 - Cultural Heritage v2 of the ES);
• Groundwater impact at the Barton-on-Sea Golf Club (Chapter- 12 Hydrology and Hydrogeology v2);
• Methods to control groundwater impacts (Chapter 12- Hydrology and Hydrogeology v2);
• Road safety (Chapter 16- Traffic Impact Assessment v2);
• Landscape and visual impacts (Chapter 13- Landscape & Visual Impact Assessment v2.); and
• Updated roundabout design to improve safety and revised working scheme to better protect the boundary trees and hedgerows (Chapter 4 of the ES).

We will respond later in the year with the Regulation 25 requests for biodiversity and restoration.

Working with the community:

Many thanks to everyone who either attended our initial consultation events, contacted us through our website or submitted a comment on the Hampshire County Council portal. We appreciated the opportunity to share our plans, discuss concerns and listen to feedback.

We understand that some in the community have concerns about the proposals, and, as a responsible operator, it is our role to provide factual information to inform and give reassurance. To those that we have been able to speak with so far, we hope by sharing details on our approach, and showcasing our existing operational quarry in Milford, that we have been able to provide necessary clarity on key aspects of the scheme to allay many concerns.

Over the past few months we have reviewed all comments raised by the local community, along with the responses from the statutory consultees. We have undertaken further work with technical specialists to update our plans, or add more detail into our proposals to respond to specific queries.

Working with the community is of utmost importance to us, and alongside the continual work we do with local schools, community groups, and our wildlife partnerships, we will be hosting further open day events this summer (2023), to enable more people to speak with us and see our operations. We will provide a registration link on this page once we have set the dates and advertised the events locally.