Sir – I write on behalf of Northmoor Parish Council, whose clerk and councillors are all signatories to this letter.

We wish to let your readers know of the appalling dysfunction which seems to afflict Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) in relation to its planning for sharp sand and gravel extraction in the county.

While required to have a minerals and waste pllan for Oxfordshire, OCC seems to have gone out of its way to avoid proper public process on the consultation on the key dimension of the plan: the Local Aggregate Assessment, being the estimate of the annual need for sand, gravel and rock to be excavated in the county.

Having consulted on its original LAA, calculated using the Government-recommended 10-year rolling average of past consumption, OCC then abandoned that method, and adopted a completely different and flawed one. This would lead to a massive increase in the landbank of land earmarked for quarrying, which cannot be supported by any logical or rational calculation.

While OCC found time to consult with the gravel industry on this increase, it did not consult with members of the local public most affected, who would have been quick to point out that despite the increase in the amount of building and construction activity in Oxfordshire, there has been a steep decline in the use of freshly-dug gravel in modern construction.

We are therefore likely to need less rather than more gravel to be dug. Despite this, OCC are recommending an annual figure some 252 per cent more than the latest 2013 actual gravel dug in Oxfordshire of 402,000 tonnes.

With this unsound work and lack of proper consultation, the OCC Core Strategy Minerals and Waste 2031 is likely to be rejected for a second time by the inspector at the forthcoming examination in public.

This entirely avoidable maladministration destroys the credibility of OCC as a minerals planning authority, and is especially damaging to those communities in the west and the south of the county who will bear the brunt of the needless quarrying that would be required.

Dr Graham Shelton
Northmoor