Quarrying in Cople

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Bedfordshire County Council are preparing a new plan for quarrying in Bedfordshire. This plan will identify areas which will be worked for minerals over the coming years.

Cople and Willington have been identified as potential quarry sites.

I have looked through the published plans. They are disjointed and not very easy to visualize the total area involved so I have attempted to outline each of the sites onto one local map. There are many more and larger sites identified around Willington.

DO NOT TAKE THIS AS A COMPLETE OR CORRECT PICTURE, I MAY HAVE MADE SOME MISTAKES OR MISSED A SITE .

Plans

The areas around Cople tend to be the fields to the east of Northill Road / Willington Road plus more excavations in the areas between Cople and Willington. Many other new sites have been listed around Willington

The Bedford CC contact is Andrew Marsh, tel 01234 276568, email: Andrew.Marsh@bedscc.gov.uk

The Beds CC web site contains links to a number of documents giving more details; look down the web page for the section headed "Minerals Core Strategy and Site Allocations Plan". Andrew advises me these are the relevant document numbers that would concern Cople residents.

A number of meetings around the county have been organised by the council for residents to learn more and voice your opinions. The nearest to Cople is scheduled for April 2nd 2007, 3pm to 8pm in the Willington Village Hall.

I am sure you will have many questions, including if, when, impact, timescales, and what will be the possible uses for the quarries when the minerals have been extracted.

From Cople Parish Magazine

Quarrying in Cople

You need to let the Beds CC know your opinon, see below for details

The council recently announced an investigation into new quarry sites around Bedfordshire. Willington (to Great Barford and Moggerhanger) and Cople figure prominently in this process.

The Beds CC presented their plans in Willington Village Hall on April 2nd. Much of what was shown can be seen tucked away on the Beds CC web site, look half way down for the section headed Minerals Core Strategy and Site Allocations Plan and click links to Potential Sites for Mineral Extraction 1 – 10, 31-46 and 47

The plans tend to be spread around several disjointed applications of smaller sites. Join the plans together and you begin to see the overwhelming size of the whole. It would be foolish to believe that only one or two of the sites would be excavated, for each area it will be all or nothing. The potential is to almost surround Willington with a number of very large quarries, joining up those which already exist.

The plan also shows the start of a movement into Cople with several fields immediately to the east of Cople running parallel to Northill and Willington Road. There is a gap between these sites and the Cople houses but the extraction companies can later request extensions right up to their back fences in the same way they now seek to do so in Willington, as well as extending the quarry on to Mox Hill.

Once a site has been quarried it then has the potential to become a land fill site (“it probably won’t be smelly household waste”). All of this comes at a cost and that cost is to the residents that have the misfortune to live near the quarries.

As we can clearly see with Willington once they have one working pit they apply to extend this to become ever larger. We can also see the manner in which they use terminology to dress up and divert objections until it is too late; does anyone still think the local “golf course” is anything other than an excuse for a land fill site?

Andrew Marsh (Bedfordshire County Council) tells me they need quarries to extract 12 million tonnes more of gravel. This still requires a very large area of quarrying but not all those on the plan will be required. He is seeking your opinions, should Cople be one of these pits?

If you would like a quarry in Cople he would like to hear from you. Alternatively if you are against the proposal you must let him know your feelings. Unfortunately the way these things work you must make your opinion known, the fewer objections received the happier they are to proceed.

For more information contact Mr Andrew Marsh. He is a pleasant and helpful man. His email address is Andrew.marsh@bedscc.gov.uk. His telephone is 01234 276568

If you wish to comment (approve or object) to the quarrying write to

Minerals Plan
Minerals and Waste Planning Team
Bedfordshire County Council
County Hall
Cauldwell Street
MK42 9AP

or e-mail MWPlans@bedscc.gov.uk

The sites that are nearest to Cople are MD8, 31, 32, 33, 34, 39 and 47. MD8 is a very large site extending to Moggerhanger, MD31 is the large site to the east of Cople, the other sites are mainly smaller ones extending the MD31 site. I feel the main objections are: too close to residential dwellings, they destroy the best agricultural land, all sites have archaeological interest, they are important flood or drainage sites, they have highway access problems, one has a gas pipeline, noise, lorry movements, unsightly and they will probably lower the resale value of Cople homes.