It has been confirmed that the proposed quarry at Clifton Hampden will be discussed by Oxfordshire County Council’s planning committee on 3rd June – nineteen months after the original plans were thrown out.
The deadline for public comments on the revised plans by Hills Quarry Products relating to the height of bunds to screen the workings of the proposed quarry, is also 3rd June, however planning staff will update the paperwork and reports as responses come in on the day.
The main opposition group against the quarry is Bachport (Burcot & Clifton Hampden for the Protection of the River Thames), supported by Burcot and Clifton Hampden, Long Wittenham, Culham and Appleford parish councils. Bachport says the changes proposed in the recent submissions by Hills do not overcome a wide range of issues.
Spokesman Giles Baxter said: “Hills continue to deny that the application is an inappropriate development in the Green Belt and have not provided ‘very special circumstance’ to justify any grant of planning permission.”
“The proposal continues to require more than a kilometre of enormous and incongruous bunds during the lifetime of the development, and wholesale destruction of the existing landscape.”
Bachport says the revised proposal to lower the height of the tallest of the bunds from 10 metres to 8 metres would leave nearby residents vulnerable to noise intrusion during the long life of the quarry. It also fails to address the “devastating impacts” the bunds would have on the openness of the Green Belt.
Mr Baxter says Hills has also failed to answer long standing complaints about the quarry including extra traffic of one hundred lorries a day adding extra traffic, noise and pollution to an already busy main road, the A415. He urges opponents to write to the county council and attend the planning committee meeting on 3rd June at County Hall.
More details on the Bachport website.
