Overview - Aggregates Policy (Extended)

 

Summary

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. The current policy is set out in Minerals Policy Statement 1: Planning and Minerals (MPS1) L0216 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.
3. Core policy is currently stated 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.
4. Ancillary policy objectives for aggregates 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
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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 are awaited on the scope of national policy for minerals in general and aggregates in particular.

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Emergence of aggregate as a key construction material in the 20th Century

The steadily increasing use of aggregates in the UK is a response to radical changes in construction in the 20th century. The Victorians built mainly in stone, brick, iron and, latterly, steel. By 1900 maybe only 2 million tonnes of aggregate was used each year in Britain, largely for basic road-building, mortar and bulk fill. By 2000 this had reached 220 million tonnes. This reflects the shift to concrete as a major construction element and the huge growth of motor transport at the core of the economy and increasingly in social life, which required roads with stronger sub-bases that were sealed with asphalt.

For most of the first half of the 20th century aggregates supply was a local business (a feature that still largely persists, with an average haul to market of only 38km or 24 miles, despite the more recent overlay of long-distance inter-regional hard rock movement). The First World War kick-started a process of growth in the consumption of aggregates which continued into the inter-war period. By the late 1930s the demand for sand and gravel in the rapidly-developing regions of the greater South East – London, the Home Counties and along the trunk routes beyond – and the resulting pressure on the land, was noticed by geographers and the emerging planning profession. But the looming prospect of another major war diverted the attention of national policy-makers.

The development of policy: 1943-1976

The Second World War

It was the Second World War itself that gave a massive forward push to the demand for aggregates and stimulated a response in government policy-making which has persisted to the present day.

By 1943, planning for the invasion of Europe and the strategic bombing offensive together required a rapid expansion of aggregate supply. The widespread pattern of relatively small local sand and gravel pits, and hard rock quarries in the north, midlands and west of Britain, could not deliver the very large amounts of concrete needed for hard runways to carry the heavier bombers or the expansion of the docks to support the invasion of Europe, including building the Mulberry Harbours. The solution was to use wartime emergency powers to create a system of Interim Development Orders (IDOs), under which local authorities gave simple rapid consents to new or expanded quarries, subject to few if any conditions. Permissions granted under the IDOs were later validated in the post-war Planning Acts, and have led to some of the largest quarries in England still in production. It took until the 1990s for surviving IDO sites to be made subject to modern working conditions.

Post-war reconstruction – the first steps in systematic supply planning

After the war it was clear that the management of aggregate supply for concrete, asphalt and other construction uses would be essential for post-war reconstruction and economic recovery, initially within continuing rationing of construction materials. The post-war Government in 1946 appointed an Advisory Committee under Mr (later Sir) Arnold Waters to assess the future demand for sand and gravel. Waters was the first step on the road to establishing a separate planning regime for minerals, including the systematic forecasting of the need for aggregates. The forecasts consistently underestimated demand, as post-war recovery was succeeded by the economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s, but Waters laid the foundations for a system that has in its fundamentals survived to the present day.

Further evidence of the importance the post-war governments attached to mineral supply is seen in the publication in 1951 by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government of the first edition of "The Control of Mineral Working", known as the Minerals Green Book, and the precursor of the system of mineral policy guidance notes and statements issued from the late 1980s onwards. An important passage on general policies, emphasising the national need for minerals, noted that they aimed: "to ensure that mineral deposits needed, or likely to be needed, to meet future production requirements are not unnecessarily sterilised by surface development". It is also significant that the Government retained into the 1950s some direct powers to permit mineral working.

Development of comprehensive regional supply planning from the late 1960s

The concerns that led to the appointment of the Waters Committee continued throughout the 1950s and accelerated in the 1960s, following the construction boom and the growth of demand created by the motorways programme. Planning applications for extended or new aggregates extraction became increasingly contentious, and the maintenance and increase of supply became increasingly dependent on successful appeals against initial refusals. Towards the end of the 1960s Sand and Gravel Working Parties were established under local authority chairmanship after discussions between the Government, local authorities and the industry. Initially these were in the South East, based on the gravel service areas defined by the Waters Committee.

In response to the broader range of concerns about the increasing demand for aggregates on the one hand, and emerging perceptions of the resulting environmental impacts, in 1972 the Government appointed a Committee under the Chairmanship of Sir Ralph Verney to advise on the supply of aggregates to the construction industry. Verney reported in 1976, stating that:

"The continuing increase in levels of demand, the environmental pressures against extraction, and the limited contribution from marine and artificial sources, have led to a growing concern over the future sources of production."

In response it set out a key formulation of the essential balance to planning policy for aggregates which has endured ever since:

"The object of a policy for aggregates must be to achieve an adequate and steady supply to meet the needs of the construction industry, at minimum money and social costs. Creation of environmental nuisance by aggregates production and distribution cannot totally be avoided; but every reasonable effort must be made to minimise the environmental costs".

The Committee endorsed the extension of the regional Sand and Gravel Working Parties to cover most of England and Wales in the early 1970s, and their expansion to cover all aggregates sources. It also recommended another key element of what subsequently became the Managed Aggregates Supply System:

"Demand forecasts should be based on a wide-ranging analysis of past trends in the construction industry, together with carefully thought-out assumptions on the future development of the industry, and consequent assessment of demand for aggregates by end-use category and by material type. Forecasts should not rely too much on sophisticated statistical analysis and should not be projected to an unreasonable extent in future. We regard a period of 10-15 years as being reasonable for detailed forecasting".

While much of this prescription was followed, the complexity and perceived obscurity of the demand forecasts eventually became a disputed issue, notably after 1994.

Other key recommendations of Verney were:

• increased land release for extraction in the South east of England and in other areas of high demand;
• extended use of rail for aggregate haulage to markets
• improved quality of site restoration;
• reduced constraints on marine dredging of sand and gravel;more use of secondary material and suitable wastes such as colliery spoil as substitutes for primary aggregate;
• the development of coastal super-quarries enabling bulk transport by sea.

The Verney Committee's report was largely adopted in England and Wales (though not in Scotland, where the tensions between demand and supply for aggregates were, and are, less acute). Its recommendations have had a large influence on the management of aggregates supply system up to the present. That system has the following core features:

• national planning policy based on securing an adequate and steady supply of material, but subject to the avoidance and mitigation of unacceptable adverse impacts;
• regular surveys of the pattern of supply, funded by the Government;
• central collation and analysis by the Government of the survey data;
• central economic forecasting of demand and apportionment through regional guidelines, with sub-regional apportionment to individual authorities of the requirement for the next planning period being considered by the Working Parties and agreed by local authorities at regional level;
• Government support and oversight through a National Co-ordinating Group and Technical Working Party, and funding of the work by the Secretaries of the Regional Aggregate Working Parties (known as RAWPs).

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The development of mineral planning policy and law: 1976-1995

In parallel with concerns about aggregates supply dealt with by the Verney Committee, by the early 1970s the Government felt it was also necessary to look into wider aspects of the planning control of mineral working. The MHLG "Green Book" of 1951 was revised and reissued in 1960, but the arrangements for managing in all parties' interests what had become one of the most contested and controversial forms of development appeared inadequate. The Aberfan coal tip disaster in South Wales on October 1966 had highlighted the need for much better management of mineral wastes. In response, the then Government had committed itself to the removal of all spoil tips and the proper remediation and restoration of coal-mining land. This added to a general sense that a new and comprehensive approach to mineral planning was required.

In 1972 the Government therefore appointed Sir Roger Stevens to chair a Committee on Minerals Planning Control. It was asked to examine the operation of the law on the planning control of mineral exploration, extraction, surface workings and installations and related matter, including the planning control of aggregates.

Stevens reported in 1976. The Committee recommended:

• a special legal regime for mineral planning;
• Mineral Planning Authorities (MPAs) should have specialist staff;
• long-term policy planning for minerals;
• that the Government should produce mineral planning guidance, and keep it under periodic review and revision;
• that planning permissions for mineral development should have a maximum life of 60 years;
• MPAs should have the power to review and update conditions on permissions.

Implementing the Stevens recommendations

Implementing Stevens proved a very long and hard process. This was largely because of the legal complexities raised by the proposals to interfere with existing mineral permissions, which had conveyed property rights that in normal circumstances could not be removed without payment of compensation. There were several false starts. However, over the next 20 years, considerable progress was made:

• the Mineral Working Act 1981 placed a 60 year limit was placed on the life of a mineral permission that did not have an end date of its own. It was reasoned that 60 years was comfortably beyond the depreciated life of the investment in plant necessary for the winning of the mineral which gave it its value, thereby removing the need to pay compensation. The provision came into effect in February 1982, thereby setting 2042 as the default end date. This was particularly significant for the IDO permissions issued under the wartime emergency powers between 1943 and 1948, some of which had become large high volume quarries, and other old "undated" permissions, including some directly issued by the Government into the early 1950s;
• long-term mineral planning, at least for aggregates, was delivered from the 1970s onwards in the development of the managed aggregates supply system building on the work and recommendations of the Waters and Verney Committees;
• modern mineral planning guidance emerged in the 1980s as part of a wider revamp of planning policy generally. Policy specific to aggregate working in England and Wales, including the latest supply guidelines and regional apportionments, was first issued in Mineral Planning Guidance Note 6 (MPG6) in 1989. This was revised and reissued in 1994;
• powers to review and update the conditions in existing mineral permissions were taken in legislation in 1991 and 1995. The Planning and Compensation Act 1991 applied these to the wartime IDO permissions, and the Environment Act 1995 extended this not only by requiring initial reviews of all conditions in all other undated permissions granted before 1980 but also establishing that all permissions should henceforth be reviewed at 15-year intervals, to ensure that all sites are operating in accordance with current best practice.

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Development of planning policy and law affecting aggregates since 1995

The period since 1995 has seen a consolidation of the trends in mineral planning policy and practice established over the previous 50 years and the emergence of some significant new elements. Notable developments included:

• introduction of the Aggregates Levy: Following the change of Government in 1997, and research to establish the value of the "external" impacts of aggregate quarrying that were not removed by mitigating conditions, a levy of £1.60 per tonne was imposed on primary quarried aggregate in the 2000 Budget, and introduced in 2002-03. The rate was increased to £1.95 per tonne in 2008-09 and has stood sat £2.00 per tonne since 2009-10. The aim was not only to capture the claimed environmental externalities but also introduce a price incentive to boost the use of untaxed secondary and recycled material as aggregate substitutes. The Levy was intended to be revenue neutral, with the bulk being returned at its introduction through a 0.1% reduction in the employers' National Insurance Surcharge. However, roughly 10% of the revenue, broadly in the range £30-£35m per annum for Great Britain, went into an Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, administered by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Fund has been used in various ways to help reduce the remaining impacts of aggregate quarrying, including local direct mitigation projects, broader programmes administered by Natural England and English Heritage and a range of research projects linked to aspects of aggregate extraction and supply;
• the detachment of Wales from the managed supply process: after Welsh devolution in the late 1990s, the new Welsh Assembly Government adopted its own approach to aggregates supply. While the Welsh RAWPs have continued, they have been given a broader remit in preparing Regional Technical Statements, and are no longer an integral part of the former process of periodic revision and apportionment of future aggregates supply guidelines for England and Wales. However, close liaison on matters such as cross-border data is encouraged and maintained. Welsh aggregates policy seeks a precautionary approach to the export of aggregate to England, especially into from North Wales into North West England. Paragraph 29 of Mineral Planning Policy Wales (2004) requires:
  • "careful and continual assessment of existing and anticipated future
    exports of aggregates to areas outside Wales (in consultation with those
    importing regions outside Wales) to determine whether that supply is the
    best environmental and practicable option for all".
    
    To achieve this, Welsh policy emphasises the proximity principle, avoiding unnecessary haulage in either direction across the Wales-England boundary, and maximising the use of secondary and alternative material;
• refinement of aggregates planning policy in England: the 1994 version of MPG6 was unsatisfactory in a number of respects:
  • combining the supply guidelines of the Managed Supply system with the planning policy principles for aggregate extraction led to inflexibility, since the Guidelines needed to be capable of revision in line with the 4-year cycle of monitoring surveys, whereas mineral planning policy does not need to be revised as frequently;
  • the calculation and regional apportionment of the supply guidelines in MPG6 (1994) was criticised as having been produced in a "black box" of econometric analysis that was not transparent to other stakeholders of the system;
  • Mineral Planning Policy for individual minerals such as coal, aggregates, cement, silica sand etc. all used much the same standard text on basic principles and considerations of general application. As a result, a restructuring of mineral planning policy was undertaken, within the wider programme of revising all planning policy alongside the major reforms of the plan-making system in the 2004 Planning Act, to concentrate core policy and material specific to certain minerals;
  • The result was to separate the two strands in MPG6, producing:
    • revised national supply Guidelines issued in 2004;
    • Minerals Planning Statement 1: Planning and Minerals: in 2006.
      This is a consolidated statement of general mineral planning policy principles, supported by 4 separate Annexes on the special issues to be considered in relation to particular minerals. Annex A deals with Aggregates, cross referring to the Guidelines and the work of the RAWPs, and aggregate-specific matters such as landbanks. This format creates the potential for issuing further Annexes as and when it becomes necessary to revise or introduce planning policy specific to other mineral.
• integration of sub-regional aggregate apportionment into English regional planning:
  • before the late 1990s the final sub-regional apportionment of the aggregates supply guidelines to individual local authorities, for incorporation as necessary into their Structure and Minerals Local Plans, was decided by agreement between the Region's Chief Planning Officers, taking into account any views expressed by the RAWPs which they usually chaired;
  • In the late 1990s the post-1997 Government established a system of regional planning with indirect political involvement through local authority nominees to Regional Assemblies. The Assemblies were in turn advised by Regional Planning Bodies (RPBs), which had small teams of staff including some seconded from constituent local authorities. In view of this development, it was not politically acceptable to maintain a separate system for deciding the sub-regional aggregate apportionments as a technical matter usually outside direct local political control. Political interest in the apportionment process therefore grew from about 2000 onwards, though at that stage the apportionments were still non-statutory, and no changes in the 1994 Guidelines (in MPG6) had been considered necessary;
  • the regional apportionments system formally went statutory and political in 2004, with the publication of new Guidelines for the first time in 10 years, and the creation of statutory Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs). It was therefore necessary to integrate the sub-regional apportionments within the RSSs process, which brought them under the scrutiny of the Regional Assemblies. Though these remained unelected bodies following the failure of a trial regional referendum on creating a directly-elected Assembly in the North East, their nominated elected members could now see for themselves the link between the regional apportionments made nationally by the Government and the share of future aggregates supply eventually expected from their constituent authorities. Perhaps inevitably, the longstanding acceptance of the need to manage imbalances between areas of surplus and areas of net demand, which had been defined and endorsed by the Waters and Verney Committees, came under challenge in some regions as work proceeded in preparing the new RSSs;
  • the degree of regional challenge became more acute after new Guidelines were issued by the Government in 2008, and following a review some further revisions were proposed. Discussions on those were still in progress during the 2009 County Council elections, where in some areas they became a political issue. A number or unresolved issues then spilled over into and beyond the 2010 General Election, anticipating an Opposition political promise to abolish regional planning in England, a promise now being implemented by the Coalition Government through the Localism Bill 2010;
  • the future operation of managed aggregates supply at regional and sub-regional level is therefore currently under review by the Government, as part of its parallel wider examination of all planning policy.
• introduction of a separate, additional system of fees for monitoring mineral planning permissions: Regulations came into force on 6 April 2006 to provide for the payment of a fee to mineral (and waste) planning authorities in England and Wales for the monitoring of mineral (and landfill waste) permissions. They therefore apply to all aggregate extraction. Mineral operations involve a continuous process of development, sometimes over many years and even decades in accordance with their planning permissions. These are now subject to numerous complex and technical planning conditions to mitigate their impacts, and the system of periodic reviews of those conditions. The objective of these fees was to ensure that mineral permissions are monitored in accordance with good practice and to recover the ongoing costs of monitoring incurred by local authorities. These do not arise from other forms of development and are not covered by the fees for making an application for permission.
• creation of a statutory system for permitting marine aggregates dredging: the licensing of marine aggregate dredging is the responsibility of the Crown Estate, as "ground landlord" and owner of the mineral rights in UK territorial waters below the mean low water mark. Since 1968 applicants for dredging licenses also had to seek an informal "Government View" of the acceptability of the proposals in relation to matters such as navigation, wrecks and war graves, fisheries and coastal erosion. In effect, elements of this procedure developed into a de facto environmental assessment. Subsequently:
  • After the first EU Directive on Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in 1988 (see below), the Government added to its non-statutory Government View procedures the EU requirement for a full Environmental Statement;
  • However, since marine aggregate dredging was not covered by the land-based planning system, the EIA Directives were not applied to it in UK law. Despite the legal argument that Directives have "direct effect", the absence of formal transposition was unsatisfactory, putting the UK into default;
  • From the late 1990s onwards the Government therefore worked on creating a statutory system of permitting marine minerals dredging incorporating EIA, eventually doing so in parallel with a wider programme to establish a marine planning system;
  • In 2002 the Government published Marine Minerals Guidance Note 1, setting out policy for marine minerals dredging – in practice almost exclusively of sand and gravel aggregates. Regulations creating a statutory system for granting marine minerals permissions, subject to the EU EIA Directives, were eventually made in 2007. Following issue of the Regulations responsibility for marine dredging permissions was transferred from the Department for Communities and Local Government to the Marine and Fisheries Agency (MFA) of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The MFA became part of the new Marine Management Organisation in 2010.

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• the increasing impact of environmental awareness and law, and including European Community law: policy on aggregates has been sensitive to the environmental impacts of extraction and processing since it was first developed in the years after 1945. The first Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) were designated for planning protection in 1949. And when the Peak District National Park was designated in 1951, its boundary was drawn so as to exclude the large limestone quarries around Buxton. At that time it was seen as essential to secure aggregate supplies for national reconstruction alongside creating access to the countryside for recreation and preserving valuable landscapes. While it was possible to separate to two (at least with a line on the map) around Buxton, elsewhere substantial quarries continued in operation in the Peak District and other National Parks. In subsequent decades, statutory environmental protection has greatly expanded in scope and public understanding and support. It is easier to see the impact of a quarry on the landscape of a sensitive habitat than it is to envisage the benefits of its products, maybe in distant locations. These developments have put increasing pressure on locations where quarrying is seen as "unsustainable". While UK domestic policy focussed initially on protecting countryside, historic and cultural heritage assets and SSSIs, accession in 1972 to what is now the European Community greatly expanded the range of environmental regulation. From the 1990s in particular, a range of EU Directives have been transposed into UK law, with significant influence on planning policy for minerals, and hence for aggregates.
  • Environmental Impact Assessments of major development proposals (1985 Directive, implemented through successive sets of UK Regulations applicable to all development depending on its nature and scale, including land-based aggregates extraction, starting in 1988). Many quarrying applications for planning permission are therefore now subject to EIA, which requires operators to produce an Environmental Statement as part of their applications for planning permission. Initially, the conditions reviews of old permissions, and subsequent periodic reviews of all permissions introduced in legislation in 1991 and 1995 (see above), were not made subject to EIA because they were not considered to be "development consent". However, a succession of court judgments in the late 1990s held that to be incorrect, since without a review granting new conditions quarrying could not continue or be resumed. Regulations were therefore made in 2000 to apply the EIA requirement to reviews of existing mineral permissions. But these could not apply to a number of reviews in progress when these Regulations were introduced, raising complex issues of retrospection in cases where operators did not voluntarily submit acceptable environmental statements. Further Regulations to deal with this were eventually made in 2008.
  • Protection of habitats (EU Habitats Directives 1992, including extension and amendment of the 1979 Directive on wild birds), implemented through successive sets of UK Regulations starting in 1994). This requires the designation of protected sites for rare and endangered plants, animal and bird species and their habitats, within which development, including any form of mineral extraction, can only take place for reasons of overriding national importance. That is a very tough test. Where there is pre-existing quarrying, after due "appropriate assessment" sites may have to be closed or reduced in scale, with the Government agreeing to pay compensation for the loss of value to the owner of the mineral rights. This has been done on several occasions. EU network of habitat protection sites, known as "Natura 2000", has largely subsumed the UK system of SSSIs. These now cover about 8% of the UK land area and numerically about 70% are designated under the EU Directives. Supplementary to the protection of EU sites, the UK also gives the same protection to 168 wetland sites used by waterfowl (the highest number of any country), designated under the UN's Ramsar Convention of 1975 and implemented by the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981.
  • Strategic environmental assessment of plans and programmes (EU Directive of 2001, implemented in England by Regulations in 2004). This requires policies in development plans as well as individual projects to be subject to Environmental Assessment, including the expected impacts and scope for their mitigation where sites and areas are allocated for working aggregates;
  • Water Framework Directive (2000). This wide-ranging Directive was implemented in England and Wales through the Water Act 2003. Among its provisions are powers to control the abstraction of water. How this might be applied has been of concern to aggregates operators who need to pump water to remove mineral below the water table. Proposals that abstraction licences should be time limited have been particularly worrying, because if they expired before the end date in a site's planning permission and were not renewed the quarry could have to cease operating. But depending on the period of notice given, compensation might then be payable for the loss in value of the remaining mineral rights. Discussions between the minerals industries and the government on how this issue might be resolved are continuing. A Water White Paper is now expected, the resolution of the quarry abstraction issue looks to be some way off.
  • Mine Waste Directive (2006, implemented in England and Wales by 2 sets of Regulations in 2009). This Directive was triggered by the failures of dams in Spain and Romania in the late 1990s which had been impounding toxic waste water from the processing of metal-bearing ores. From the outset the UK mineral industries, and particularly the aggregates operators, had concerns that those promoting the Directive in some other EU countries were seeking controls that might be appropriate for the mining and processing of metalliferous ores but would be excessively restrictive and costly for large volumes of substantially inert aggregate materials. The UK negotiating team was successful in securing a Directive text that reflected the differing risks across the various sectors of the mineral industries. However, the concerns of the aggregates industries returned and became stronger after 2006, as the Government prepared regulations to implement the Directive in England and Wales, and the Environment Agency drew up the practical arrangements to implement them. These concerns were reinforced by several supplementary EU decisions on matters of administrative detail though the comitology process, which is not subject to full and open negotiations. Taken together, these developments appeared to undo much of the UK's gains in the initial full Directive negotiations. Detailed discussions have continued between the aggregates producers and the Environment Agency over an acceptable approach to implementation, and now appear close to resolving the remaining issues.

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