Consultation on the County Durham Minerals and Waste Policies and Allocations Document (stage two)

Background

This new planning document will eventually form part of the statutory development plan for County Durham and together with the County Durham Plan, it will be used to make decisions on planning applications for mineral working (quarrying and related development) and on new waste management facilities.

Once it is adopted, it will replace the current County Durham Minerals Local Plan and County Durham Waste Local Plan.

The Draft Plan takes into account comments made to the Consultation on our Minerals and Waste Policies and Allocation Document (stage one) earlier this year and includes detailed development management policies which will allow us to consider and control future mineral working and waste development.

What we are proposing

We are now consulting on three documents:

1. Draft Minerals and Waste Policies and Allocation Document: this includes policies to address detailed development management matters such as noise, dust, blasting vibration, traffic and transport matters and the restoration of mineral and some waste sites, policies that cover economically important mineral types that are not covered in the County Durham Plan and specific types of waste management operations where it is considered necessary to have policies in case future proposals come forward and two allocations for further mineral working. The Draft Plan is supported by three other documents - note that these are provided for reference and are not under consultation.
   • Site Assessment Report: this appraises all of the minerals and waste proposals which were submitted by the minerals and waste industry in response to the call for new minerals and waste sites earlier this year. The comments form which accompanies the Draft Plan allows you to make comments on the sites we have currently decided not to allocate.
   • Statement of Consultation: this details the comments which were submitted to the initial consultation earlier this year and our responses
   • Local Aggregate Assessment (Joint Local Aggregates Assessment for County Durham, Northumberland and Tyne and Wear (April 2021): this monitors the provision of aggregates and likely future demands
2. Sustainability Appraisal Report (including appendices and non-technical summary documents): this shows we have appraised each of the policies and allocations for their environmental, economic and social effects.
3. Habitats Regulation Assessment Screening Report: this shows that we have screened the Draft Plan to ensure it will not adversely affect the ecological integrity of key wildlife sites, referred to as European sites, in County Durham.

Have your say

What happens next

All comments received will be considered and will be taken into account in work to prepare a final draft which will be subject to one final stage of consultation towards the end of 2022.

The Minerals and Waste Policies and Allocations Document will then be submitted to the Government and will be examined by an independent inspector. Subject to the findings of the independent Inspector, we will proceed to finalise the document.