Summary

• The County Council has now admitted that the field was "misdescribed" in 1988/91 when a survey of sites was carried out.
• If it had been correctly described it would have given a buffer zone of 350 metres between any possible workings and the houses on Pine Woods Road.
• This would have meant that the field could not be worked since 350 metres takes out the whole field. The Government's Planning Policy Guidance Note 24 says that this should be measured from the garden boundary.
• A careless failure by Council staff did not bring this to the attention of Hanson in 2003. This was followed by Hanson buying the field.
• Council staff again failed to look at the site properly when they had a meeting with Hanson in 2004, before Hanson's PR exercise in the village hall.
• The Council has now told Hanson that any planning application must take the need for such a buffer zone into account.
• The Council's Plans and its invariable practice for at least 30 years other than in very exceptional circumstances has been to require such a buffer zone. Exceptional circumstances has meant an enclosed and screened site or one with other situations. This site is an exceptionally open site.
• The Council has refused to make a statement until there is a planning application. However to approve such an application would be contrary to the Council's own Plan.

The Issue

In 2004 the Longworth Parish Council was astonished to receive a letter from Hanson Aggregates announcing that it was proposing to apply for planning permission to dig 125,000 tons of sand per year from a site bordered by Pine Woods Road, the A420 and Hinton Road. Hanson proposed to hold a "Public Consultation" meeting in the Village Hall. This meeting in July 2004 proved to be at best a PR exercise with most of the information given being inaccurate or uninformative as subsequently admitted by Philip Duncan, then of Hanson, in a letter to Peter McGregor dated 1st September 2004. A later meeting with two OCC officials (Rob Dance and Emma Shaw) was similarly unhelpful. Neither of these meetings revealed that the site had been identified (wrongly, as it turned out) in 1988/91 when a decision was taken not to make the information known to the public. Nor was it made known that Hanson had bought the field immediately after consultation with OCC officials in 2003. Further it was not revealed that limestone was to be extracted in addition to soft sand. Hanson, whilst being vague about when it would submit a planning application, nonetheless gave the impression that it was to be "soon". The possibility of such an application being granted put a potential planning blight on neighbouring houses, particularly those in Pine Woods Road.

The Investigation

Residents knew nothing about all this until 2004. It was necessary that they should find out, and accordingly research to this end was undertaken by the writer of this report. The use of the Freedom of Information Act and considerable persistence enabled the whole story to be extracted from reluctant Council officials, with some senior officials refusing at first to answer correspondence addressed to them. The Act enabled the writer to see correspondence between the Council and Hanson, and also internal correspondence between Council officials. No information was actually refused but interpretations of the information were handled in an unhelpful and misleading way, unhappily all too familiar to anyone who has dealt with officials in UK public service. This research revealed a series of errors by Council officials which had caused the field to be wrongly identified as a suitable site, who had concealed this information for over ten years, and who had given no indication to Hanson in 2003 that the site had any restrictions. Hanson bought the site after enquiries to the Council in 2003. The Council officials continued to discuss it with Hanson without suggesting that there were any problems.

As research progressed attempts were made to get constructive responses from the Council. A meeting was held with the Leader of the Council, Councillor Keith Mitchell to ask how "an intention to apply for planning permission" could be handled to avoid planning blight on nearby properties. This meeting was not productive with the Council unwilling to admit a mistake. Further research uncovered much more. Councillor Anne Purse, then Executive Member for Strategic Planning and Waste management, helped to focus the minds of officials on the key question of buffer zones and the need to draw the issue to Hanson's attention. An approach was made to Councillor Belson, Cabinet Member for Economy and Environment who is alleged to have said "This is too hot to handle" and withdrew from the issue. Only after a letter had been written to the Chief Executive did it become possible to obtain replies to letters to Richard Dudding, Director Economy and Environment and subsequently to have a meeting with him.

History

Under the Planning Law at the time the County Council was obliged to survey mineral resources in the County. In 1988/91 it carried out such a survey, dealing with soft sand sites. We were able to secure a copy of the documents. The survey identified a number of sites. Several were eliminated because they could not provide acceptable buffer zones between settlements and mineral workings. A buffer zone of 350 metres was taken to be required between hamlets and mineral workings. One such site was in Gainfield about which it was recorded that most of the site would be absorbed by a 350 metre buffer zone for Gainfield (hamlet). The site under review in this report (known in the report as Pinewood) was called "West of Longworth Hospital" and included on the short list with a 100 metre buffer zone. At that time the hospital had not been in existence for several years and development had produced 13 properties (11 new, one existing and one undeveloped). Later (and after considerable effort) it was established and agreed by the Council that this settlement constituted a hamlet and should have been given a 350 metre buffer zone. Such a buffer zone would have absorbed the whole of the Pinewood field. The field was only on the short list of available sites because of an error on the part of Council officials. In 2006 Mr Richard Dudding (OCC Director, Economy and Environment) agreed in his letter to the writer dated 8th February 2006 following a meeting on 20th January that the Council had "misdescribed" the site. He also said that if a buffer zone of 350 metres had been proposed then it would almost certainly have resulted in its being excluded from the short list at that time.

On 22nd April 2003 Philip Duncan (then of Hanson) approached OCC (Peter Day) by telephone to ask for the Council's views on the possibility of soft sand extraction at the site. Clearly he was picking up a site which had been identified as one on the short list. He followed it with a letter dated 1st May in which limestone was added to soft sand. It is fairly clear that at this time Hanson knew about the site being on the short list even if the Parish Council and residents did not. Peter Day sought comments from "relevant people" in the Council and replied on 26th June. Amongst their comments as he presented them were that "the site is generally well distanced from houses, apart from the 'few houses' to the east side of Pine Woods Road and adjoining the north east corner of the site." This presumably originated in an internal note from John Duncalfe dated 21st June 2003 which said that "my recollection of the site is that it is very open and difficult to screen. Other sand and limestone quarries are far better screened. The best aspect is that it is some distance from houses and it also has good access." Peter Day's transmission of this response to Hanson left out many of the potential problems, some of which even Duncalfe's response did not appreciate. They had not thought of the development on Pine Woods Road as a hamlet for which the OCC definition is "a group of more than 10 contiguous properties." Hanson were not made aware of the field's status. It should be noted that in a report on "Options in Soft Sand production" to the Council's Minerals Working Party on 24th May 1991 (part of the survey process) David Young the Director of Planning and Property Services said that the site was very open and difficult to screen. At this time County officials' titles were descriptive of what they actually did.

The question of the road junction was also covered in Peter Day's letter to Hanson and presumably originated in an internal reply from Tony Clark of OCC Development Control Department on 1st June 2003 to the effect that "the junction of Pine Woods Road and the A420 is high standard." This reply, it might be supposed, does not look as though it had been written by a literate person. The same Tony Clark in an e mail dated 15th December 2004 when he had been invited by a resident (Adam Ogilvie-Smith) actually to look at the junction said then that "It is my considered opinion that the introduction of slow moving HGVs at this junction would be potentially dangerous and detrimental to the safety, convenience and free flow of users of this busy high speed section of road." Geoff Barrell, Principal Engineer of the OCC Road Safety/Traffic Engineering Department in a letter dated 17th June 2005 said that "although the junction operates safely at present we would have serious safety concerns if there were any major increase in HGV movements across it as it would pose an unacceptable risk to road users." By officers' not doing their homework properly the problems of the junction were not brought to notice during the original contact with Hanson. Hanson had specifically asked Peter Day about access but clearly no one had seriously addressed the question It is interesting to note that Peter Day's letter to Hanson devoted three and a half lines to "Adjoining Land Uses" (i.e. houses) eight lines to landscape and ecology, fourteen lines to archaeology (there is no interest!) and five and a half to access

A number of officials' oversights and inaccuracies therefore informed the reply to Hanson by Peter Day and effectively gave the green light to the development. It may be thought to be no coincidence that a month or two later Hanson bought the field for £2 million, and it is difficult to accept Richard Dudding's view (expressed in a meeting with representatives of Longworth Parish Council including the writer in 2006) that it might have been bought by Hanson on a "win some, lose some" basis.

A "pre-application meeting" was held between Council officials and Hanson on 13th February 2004 (i.e. still before the residents knew about the situation.) At this meeting no difficulties were indicated by Council officials. The tone of the minutes , printed on 9th March, is that everything proposed by Hanson was quite satisfactory and acceptable to all. It is difficult to understand how officials can hold such a meeting before a planning application is submitted, especially when they are nodding the proposals through as in this case. The meeting was held in Speedwell House Oxford, not on site. This meeting demonstrated a continuing indifferent attitude, uninformed and without proper on site investigation, but apparently one good enough for officials to make judgements. It is surely quite improper for officials to make any comments at all upon a potential planning application before the application is submitted.

Council officials have done their best to try to minimise the importance of the 350 metre buffer zone since once they had accepted that the settlement on Pine Woods Road was a hamlet such a buffer zone would be obligatory and the field unworkable. Research shows that mention of the 350 metre zone seems to have appeared first in 1983 (based upon work in the late 1970s) in an Explanatory Memorandum to the first Structure Plan for Oxfordshire, to which minerals policies had been added. In spite of Council officials' more recently professed ignorance of the origin of the 350 metres figure this distance was taken seriously in the survey of sites mentioned above, and in subsequent planning applications. It can be taken with confidence that the 350 metre buffer zone has been the accepted one for settlements of hamlets and above for at least 30 years.

It has been established that there were no changes to Structure Plan policies involving minerals between 1981 and 1988. The 350 metre distance set out in the earlier document was obviously fixed clearly in the minds of officials at that time. It was observed where relevant in all sites mentioned.

During the preparation of what eventually became the 1996 Minerals and Waste Local Plan (MWLP) an attempt was made by an Inspector to remove reference to the 350 metre buffer zone. The Council rejected this and incorporated it as a guide in the Plan. This Plan is still current and therefore the buffer zone (in Policy PE3) is still current. A letter from Emma Shaw of OCC to the writer dated 1st December 2004 confirmed that the settlement in Pine Woods Road constitutes a hamlet. A letter from John Duncalfe of OCC to the writer dated 17th March 2005 confirmed that he "has drawn to the attention of Philip Duncan of Hanson to the need to address the established standards for a 350 metre buffer zone as set out in the Mineral and Waste Local Plan paragraph 4.8. He should use this paragraph as a starting point for establishing the appropriate buffer zone for any sand working proposal in Longworth"

In January 2005 the late Mr D R Thorne of Hanson approached OCC to discuss buffer zones at this site. By this time Hanson knew that the situation was not as simple as officials had indicated before the site was purchased, or even at the "pre-application meeting". He was told that the Council could only assess the necessary buffer zones once an application had been submitted. It is therefore possible for officials to have meetings with a mineral company before an application is submitted (such as the one held on 13th February 2004 mentioned above) and to nod through the company's proposals but not possible to deal with a serious environmental problem set out in the MWLP. Only great pressure persuaded the Council to accept that Hanson had to be told about the buffer zone problem.

Conclusion

The 350 metre buffer zone figure may appear to be arbitrary and hence subject to amendment by circumstances; however its origin and empirical validity are not difficult to discover. Most construction plant has a noise level of 85dB(A) or more. The World Health Organisation recommendation for the maximum noise level of residential settlements is 55 dB(A). Although noise measurement is not a precision matter, attenuation of the plant noise by about 30dB(A) is achieved at a distance of approximately 300 to 350 metres. It should be noted that Planning Policy Guidance note 24 says in Clause 17 that "it should be remembered that the sound within a residential building is not the only consideration: most residents will also expect a reasonable degree of peaceful enjoyment of their gardens and adjacent amenity areas. In other words the buffer zones should be measured from the outer perimeter of the gardens of affected properties.

The Council has been asked to make it plain to Hanson that no planning application to develop this site could be accepted. The Council has refused, at various levels up to and including Director. In fact by its numerous errors the Council gave Hanson the impression that there would be no problem with such an application, resulting in Hanson buying the site and then announcing its intention to apply for planning permission. The Council by its acts of carelessness encouraged Hanson before it bought it to believe that there was no real problem. After the field was bought but before any public announcement Council officials again encouraged Hanson at the so called pre-application meeting to believe that there would be no problem.

The Council eventually and after a great deal of research and correspondence from the writer told Hanson that any application must start to count the buffer zone from 350 metres, subject to any mitigating factors which Hanson might propose. No such mitigating factors would have any real effect. Bunds are usually proposed since contractors have to find a way of temporarily disposing of top soil. The maximum attenuation claimed for such a bund is 10 dB(A) if the noise source is completely obscured from the receptor, but this claim has no empirical basis as was confirmed by the writer with the British Standards Institution and the Construction Industry Research and Information Association. It is an approximation, or guess. A belt of trees is sometimes proposed, as it is claimed that a thick belt of mature trees might give an attenuation of 6 dB(A). A single line of trees has been planted all round the site by Hanson but these are small plants about two feet high which will take at least 20 years to mature; in any case at least three lines of trees would be required to produce even minimum noise attenuation. In fact distance is the only reliable attenuating method (as noted in BS 5228 Part 1 Clause 10.3.1) unless the noise source can be completely enclosed in an acoustic box or building. This must surely be known to Council officials who have told Hanson that any claims for mitigating factors must be supported by empirical evidence. Experience with the Hatford sandpit where both bunds and a belt of cupressus leylandii have been used demonstrate their ineffectiveness. This site observed the 350 metre buffer zone but produces objectionable noise about 700 metres away. The Council should now admit its mistake and tell Hanson that the field is not available. This is a clear case of maladministration. It would require an illegal departure from the Council Plan to enable an application to be approved.