Overview of Aggregates Policy

 

1. Government policy on aggregates in England is contained in its policy for the spatial and land-use planning for minerals. There is no separate national economic policy for aggregates supply and use.
2. Policy had been developed over the past 65 years since the Waters Committee was appointed in 1946 to advise on the supply of aggregates for post-war reconstruction, and the Verney Committee of the early 1970s to deal with perceived problems in securing sufficient supplies to meet expected further growth in demand, the essence of the policy is to ensure an adequate and steady supply of aggregates to meet the needs of the construction industry with the minimum of adverse environmental impacts.
3. The policy is currently set out in Minerals Policy Statement 1: Planning and Minerals (MPS1) and its Annex A: Aggregates, published for the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) by TSO (The Stationery Office) in November 2006. It can be accessed and downloaded at www.communities.gov.uk.
4. Core policy is summarised in the introduction to MPS1:
   • Minerals are essential to the nation's prosperity and quality of life, not least in helping to create and develop sustainable communities. It is essential that there is an adequate and steady of material to provide the infrastructure, buildings and goods that society, industry and the economy needs, but that this provision is made in accordance with the principles of sustainable development. In order to secure the long-term conservation of minerals it is necessary to make the best use of then.
5. Ancillary policy objectives are stated in paragraph 2.1 of Annex A to MPS1:
   • to encourage the use, where practicable, of alternative aggregates in preference to primary aggregate;
   • to encourage the supply of marine-dredged sand and gravel to the extent that environmentally acceptable sources can be identified and exploited, within the principles of sustainable development;
   • to make provision for the remainder of supply to be met from land-won sand and gravel and crushed rock. A key element of this is the maintenance of a landbank as an indicator of when new permissions for aggregates extraction are likely to be needed. Annex A indicates that there should be for each mineral planning authority at least 7 years' supply based on recent and expected production levels for sand and gravel, and 10 years for crushed rock
6. Since 2002, aggregate extraction in Britain, uniquely among other minerals, has been subject to a tax (the Aggregates Levy), intended to compensate for the environmental impacts of extraction that cannot be removed through the imposition of planning conditions. This was initially set at £1.60p per tonne and since 2009 has been £2.00 per tonne. The tax was at first broadly revenue neutral, with about 90% of the expected initial revenue returned to all employers through a small permanent reduction in the rate of their National Insurance surcharge, and about 10% going into a Sustainability Fund for local projects and broader research and development work to help reduce the ongoing impacts of aggregate quarrying. The Sustainability Fund was abolished at the end of March 2011 and the Government will retain the revenues in future.
7. Since the 1960s a system of managed aggregates supply has been operated in England and Wales, though Wales detached from full participation after devolution in the late 1990s. This is aimed at dealing with the persisting long-term imbalances in demand and supply between the different regions of England and Wales. In particular, the South East, Eastern England and Greater London, together with the South West, are significantly in deficit, and the surplus is largely supplied from the east Midlands, the South West and North Wales. While there are inter-regional movements elsewhere, the other regions are in a closer balance. The system comprises:
   • regular surveys of the pattern of aggregate supply;
   • Regional Working Parties (RAWPs) of local authority and industry representatives and
   • periodic issue by the Government of regional guidelines for future supply, based on assessments of expected future demand.
   The guidelines are then considered by the RAWPs, and decisions taken at regional level (until about 2000) by local government planners of the sharing or "apportionment" of those guidelines, or alternatives that could be justified by objective evidence, to individual local authorities with responsibility for mineral planning (the County Councils in the 2-tier areas and the unitary all-purpose councils elsewhere). Following the General Election of 2011, the proposed abolition of regional-level planning and mounting political concern about the operation of the apportionment element of the system, its future and possible alternatives are currently being considered by the Coalition Government.
8. The Coalition Government also announced in 2010 its intention to replace the present body of planning policy and guidance, including that for mineral planning, with a much shorter National Planning Policy Framework. The apparent intention is to set out high-level principles considered to be of primary national importance, and leave local authorities to decide how much additional detail on planning policy individual authorities should set out in their own documents. Decisions from the Government are awaited on the scope of national policy for minerals in general, and aggregates in particular.
9. Within the overall policy approach, special regulatory arrangements apply to the dredging of sand and gravel aggregate from the sea bed in UK territorial waters. A substantial proportion of this is landed at UK (mainly English) ports and enters domestic supply. The Government operated an informal permitting system from 1968 to 2007, and added a requirement for formal Environmental Assessments in 1989. A new system of statutory permissions for marine mineral dredging was introduced in 2007, and since 2010 this has been run by the new Marine Management Organisation.
10. Because planning permissions can last a very long time, may have originally been granted with few if any conditions to mitigate their impacts, and in law are a continuous process of development, since the 1990s all existing and new mineral permissions have been subject to a system of periodic reviews of their conditions to keep them up to date and in line with current best practice. These reviews were made subject to Environmental Impact Assessment in 2000, bringing them into line with applications for new or extended permissions. In view of the ongoing costs of monitoring conditions throughout the life of a site a separate system of fees was introduced in 2006.

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