Quarry control slips
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• County councils are to unite in their fight against a decision by the Government to reduce their control over lorries serving quarries.
The County Planning Officers' Society is set to complain to the Department of Environment that a decision to allow county councils only a "limited degree of control over routeing" is wrong and illthought out.
The DoE is telling planning authorities that they should only ask for quarries to post notices which ask drivers to use or avoid particular roads in their area.
The CPOS will say that their previous powers—allowing them to force hauliers to use specific roads for their journeys between quarries and the national road network—should not be curtailed.
County planners say lorry routeing should be part of the planning application for mineral extraction sites and not a "minor adjunct".
Some councils, including Bedfordshire, say they are sticking to the old interpretation of section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. They say otherwise there would be "more planning application refusals, more appeals and more cost to industry".