For over two years we have been successfully resisting plans for a vast new 247-acre quarry on a species-rich landscape next to the Mendip Greatwood. Even prior to the planning committee hearing, our legal arguments have been gaining traction, causing the company to change it’s proposal. We now have a chance to defeat the application, but need bullet proof legal advice to do so. This requires us to secure £2,500 in legal costs by January 2024. 

Why Westdown Matters

Climate Impacts

The scale at which this site will be operating is hard to imagine for anyone who's not seen neighbouring Whatley Quarry. At least 2 million tonnes of carbon rich limestone will be extracted every year. This would generate a probable 33% increase in quarry HGV traffic, in addition to the incredibly carbon-intensive infrastructure required within the site to extract and process the aggregate.

 Westdown is believed to be the largest new proposed source of carbon emissions in the county. Somerset County Council cannot possibly meet their own Climate Emergency Plan aim of Net Zero by 2030 if this project is approved. 

National Climate change polices, enshrined in the recent Environment Act, would also be breached by such a decision.

Biodiversity Loss

The application threatens three unique interlinked habitats, all of which contain protected species.

The first, Asham 'Void’, is a former quarry next to Asham Wood. Asham Wood is a Site of Special Scientific Interest and the largest remaining section of the Mendip Greatwood. The ‘Void''s position next to this species rich site has seeded a remarkable regeneration in the nearly 40 years since the quarry was abandoned. Now cloaked in birch forest and orchids, the 79 acre space has been the subject of study by generations of local school children, who have been bought here to learn about the process of nature recovery. It is home to polecats and otters.

12% of the UK’s entire population of greater horseshoe bats are dependent on the area that would be destroyed.

The second, the long derelict Westdown quarry which was last excavated in the mid 1980’s, is ringed by mature woodland, provides vital connectivity for wildlife and is home to great crested newts.

The third, Westdown farm, is 100 acres of previously untouched agricultural land, vital to the lesser horseshoe bat, which have a nursery there, and the only known population of dormice in East Mendip.

In total, 247 acres of ecosystems are threatened by the applications. Extrapolation of company data suggests that the quarry would be active for 80 years, at a time when biodiversity is in freefall and critical landscapes are becoming increasingly vulnerable to diseases like Ash Dieback and the impacts of climate change.

Somerset Ecology Services (the county council’s own ecology team), Natural England and Somerset Wildlife Trust have all objected to the re-opening of the quarry. In the words of Somerset Wildlife Trust there is “a serious likelihood that vital nature networks and corridors will be disrupted beyond repair.”

Is it needed?

In the past, the company has announced that aggregate from the site is needed for the construction of HS2, Hinkley C and a new road building program. More recently they have claimed instead that it is needed for all the new hospitals and schools that are soon to be under construction.

The process that normally has oversight of forthcoming national demand for stone, alongside an analysis of what supply exists, is the Somerset Minerals Plan. This is now over 5 years overdue. Yet the application comes within a rapidly changing political and geographical landscape. A new quarry, Bartletts, has opened in the immediate area since the Minerals Plan was last reviewed. Given that the previously mentioned Whatley quarry, owned by the same company, is currently running at 2 million tonnes less each year than it has capacity for, there is every suggestion that even quite a substantial increase in demand could be met by existing pits in the region.

In terms of jobs, the company has spoken about redeploying staff from Whatley to Westdown, yet the much larger pit at Whatley itself only employs 60 people. Meanwhile jobs in the local economy, especially in tourism and hospitality, will be put at risk by the further industrialisation of the East Mendips.

So why the hurry? It may be related to the company’s hope to get permission granted before the full implications of new Environmental Protection legislation are fully realised. As it stands, the Environment Act, which was brought in after the original application was submitted, requires applicants not only to protect existing wildlife but to create a 10% Biodiversity net gain. Heidelberg Materials have made no mention of any gain, and only minimal undertakings that they will defer works until they have created viable spaces for wildlife to be relocated to. This habitat creation could take decades, if it works at all, and they have made no apparent steps to start.

Impacts on the water table

Quarrying requires the regular pumping out and processing of thousands of tonnes of water, as well as risks of run-off from excavation above the water table.

This poses a serious threat to both water quality and the aquifers on which we depend, at a time when we are only just coming out of a crisis of supply in the region, with hosepipe bans in place for extended periods. The shortfall was a result of three years of disrupted rainfall and unprecedentedly high national temperatures, a pattern which is only set to escalate.

Under the original application, Hanson were clear that they wanted to excavate below the water table. This prompted local residents to commission a report by Professor Rick Brassington, a renowned hydrogeologist. He has reviewed Hanson’s water environment study and identified that the model being used is totally inadequate. There are several fundamental areas where the current absence of information would preclude any lawful decision being taken by Somerset County Council on the applications.

In apparent response to this, Heidleberg have proposed a planning condition which states that they won’t extract below the water table until they have produced a new hydrology model. Whether this new approach is sufficiently accurate won’t be determined by the Environment Agency, as would be standard for independent oversight, but would be outsourced to a working group. Given Heidleberg's demonstrated failings in this area previously, it seems reckless to grant approval to the project on the presumption that they will meet the standard required, especially when the appropriate level of oversight will be absent.

Water is a fundamental resource for the area’s agriculture and communities, and the catchment around Westdown has implications as far as Bristol. We cannot afford to sign away its security of supply.

The Legal Context

The communities surrounding Asham Wood have been successfully fighting to protect the region from a new megaquarry for over two and a half years. In May 2021 international corporation Hanson applied for a planning permission to extract from two adjoining areas, the former Westdown Quarry and current Westdown Farm, and dump the resulting waste oolite rock in a third site, the regenerating woodland of Asham Void. Over 500 people wrote letters of objection to the Planning Inspector, based around a range of Material Considerations which would give councillors legal reason to turn down the application. All four ecological consultees objected.

By 2022 the community had commissioned a specialist legal report into the applications, in the form of a Kings Council Opinion. The Opinion revealed a significant technical flaw in the applications: it was unlawful to assert that a historic license to quarry was equivalent to a license to dump waste from one quarry to another. In November 2023 Hanson, now rebranded as Heidelberg Materials, adjusted their applications to effectively concede this. The company made a new submission to hold off dumping waste in Asham 'Void' and requested that Somerset Council hold the Asham application ‘in Abeyance’. This opened up a second consultation, covering just over a two week period. Again, hundreds of people wrote letters of objection. If the Asham application was allowed to be held in abeyance, Heidelberg could continue to apply pressure to Somerset Council legal team to change their mind.

As part of the adjusted applications, Heidelberg Materials have responded by claiming that a single precedent exists to support their case for dumping waste. We believe that by commissioning a second Kings Council Opinion into this, we can disprove the validity of that claim. This would give the councillors on the Planning Committee a water tight reason to reject the application to dump waste in Asham 'Void', effectively protecting 79 acres of the land threatened by the project. It would also have some impact of the financial viability of the rest of the works. If the quarry has to dump its waste in the site its digging, it will need to repeatedly relocate the oolite rock as it goes down.

This element of the legal work costs £6500

In addition, when the Planning Officer has completed his report, we will be given no more than 10 days notice to prepare a response to his findings and present them to the Planning Committee. With so many of the background dealings of this complex case still hidden from public view, we cannot know what legal support we need to be prepared for in this instance.

We therefore need a contingency fund of a further £1500

Of this total of £8000, £5500 has already been raised from generous local donations.

For this reason we are hoping to raise £2500

We need your support to do this: please contribute and share this page now! 

Thank you