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On Friday 11th February a packed meeting in Hinton Waldrist Village Hall received a progress report on Land not Sand, the campaign to combat the proposal by Hanson Aggregates for local sand and limestone extraction.
Chairman of the Action Group Alan Boyce opened the meeting in upbeat mood, with the news that Hanson was not now expected to make a formal planning application until the summer, and that members of the Action Group had been busy making real progress on a number of fronts.
Alan explained the current campaign strategy, which was to concentrate on a couple of key issues which currently seem to offer the best chances of derailing the Hanson plan. These are the recognition of the 350 metre buffer zone, and the problems with the A420 junction. If either one of these avenues fails to meet up to current expectations, then the LnS campaign has other potential issues in reserve which will then be activated.
Peter McGregor provided the meeting with more details of his dealings with Hanson and Oxfordshire County Council in connection with the buffer zone.
According to current OCC policy, there must be a buffer zone of 350m between a town, village or hamlet and mineral workings, whereas there need only be a buffer zone of 100m to protect individual or small groups of houses.
Following his meeting with Council officials, they have now accepted that the settlement in Pine Woods Road constitutes a hamlet. So if the OCC policy was to be applied correctly, then the 350m buffer zone around the Pinewoods Hamlet, coupled with the existing 100m buffer zones around the houses at the Southeast corner of Hinton Waldrist and the houses at the northern end of Pine Woods Road, would prevent the extraction of sand from almost all of the intended area.
Adam Ogilvie-Smith summarised the outcome of a meeting he had with a
traffic expert from OCC’s Development Control Department at the junction itself. The
OCC expert concluded that the current layout could not safely accommodate the considerable flow of lorries
that the Hanson proposal would entail.
Adam then mentioned a meeting that had taken place between the same OCC official and an engineer from Hanson. At the meeting, the official expressed doubt that some simpler (and cheaper) proposals would resolve the danger posed by the lorries. A roundabout might remove the dangers, though it would carry a heavier cost. And it would also impede the flow of traffic on the A420, a busy trunk road.
A lively question and answer session followed the presentations, and Alan concluded the evening by promising a further update meeting when there was more significant progress on the campaign to report.
Written by: Richard Kenyon
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