Stop the Industrial Development of Kingsclere Quarry

John Stacey & Son Ltd have applied to construct and operate the disused Kingsclere Lime Quarry on the A339 at Wolverton as an Industrial Waste Recycling Facility & Transfer Loading Station.

If the application is successful, the roads through the local villages could be used as ‘rat runs’ by contractors and their heavy lorries coming to and from Stacey’s site at Tadley. There could be 50 lorries or more coming past houses on these routes every day. The country lanes will not only have to deal with this excessive traffic but will become more dangerous for car users, cyclists, joggers, walkers, horse riders and other road users

Further, there will be movements of 126 lorries or more per day on the A339. This road is already busy and dangerous, and this increased heavy and slow traffic can only add to this danger with lorries turning right across the A339 coming out of the site in order to travel towards Newbury, or right across the A339 going into the site travelling from Basingstoke. Fully laden trucks will also exit the site in the direction of Basingstoke from a standing start up the hill and join the crawler lane forcing other HGVs into the second lane again increasing danger on this section of road.

This quarry site is within the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which confirms that the landscape and scenic beauty of the area has the highlest level of protection from the Government. The statutory purpose of AONBs is to "conserve and enhance" the natural beauty of an environment, which the development of an industrial site will clearly not achieve.

The operation of the site will involve 100,000 tons per year of waste materials from urban and industrial areas being transported into the AONB from outside its boundaries, for the material to be processed within the AONB, and then to be transported out again back to urban and industrial areas. This cannot either enhance or preserve the AONB and whilst the need for recycling is clear, this should be done within an existing industrial environment and not within a protected AONB.

Other major concerns resulting from the application are increased noise from machinery and lorries, dust and other air pollution, light pollution from security and operational lighting and the potential danger to the local water courses from pollution.

Details of the planning application are on The Hampshire County Council website: http://www3.hants.gov.uk/mineralsandwaste/applications-open.htm
The planning application reference is BDB 75928.

Final objections to the application need to be lodged by 16 June 2013.