Minister informed of our concerns over quarry

Dear Editor We have sent the letter below to planning minister Kevin Stewart.

“Following the decision by the independent reporter to allow the appeal and grant permission for the reopening of Hillend Quarry in Caldercruix, we are writing to ask you to explore and advise if there are any options available to you so that this decision can be looked at again.

“On September 14 we wrote to North Lanarkshire Council chief executive Paul Jukes to ask the council to appeal this decision at the Court of Session. We were advised that the planning committee would deliberate on this at their next meeting.

“At that meeting, Councillors Sophia Coyle, John Taggart and David Stocks asked for the matter to be put to a vote; the convener, Councillor James Coyle, refused in direct contradiction to the previous statement issued by council leader Jim Logue.

“The papers for the meeting made no mention of any decision to be made in respect to whether or not to appeal to the Court of Session. Similarly, councillors and members of the planning committee were not provided with any details of the legal advice provided to the council.

“We believe this is an affront to local democracy and have expressed our deep concerns to the council, and requested an extraordinary meeting of the committee to be convened so that this can be finally put to a vote and discussed properly, as it should have from the very start.

“We await the reply; however, in the meantime we have very serious concerns about the report compiled by the independent reporter. It is filled with vacuous and blatant inaccuracies, and omits key details concerning the environmental and ecological impact on Caldercruix.

“The reporter accepted residents’ concerns in respect of health and amenity concerns arising from dust, noise, HGV movements and visual impacts arising from the previous operations, he concluded that these were undertaken by a different operator, thereby implying that the new operator will operate to a higher standard – this is not based on empirical evidence and is simply speculative.

“The developer threatened that if their appeal was not sustained they ‘will have no option but to apply for renewal of the Braefoot Permission [a separate application to quarry in the vicinity awarded in 1968 but which has never been put into effect] notwithstanding the less favourable environmental impacts of this development’.

“Regrettably, the reporter appears to have been influenced by their remarks. This possibility was something that he concluded should be “accorded significant weight” in his decision. Please accept this email as a formal complaint regarding the poor quality and standard of the report, which we believe should be revoked.

“More seriously is the chasm, generated by an apparent fault line, that runs directly through the site, which as I’m sure you will appreciate is a considerable concern for everyone. The chasm has widened significantly over time and residents strongly feel that this is a significant consideration and is one of many points that has been overlooked by the reporter.

“The quarry development will devastate the community of Caldercruix, should it be allowed to go ahead. It will be a blight on the landscape, undoubtedly cause significant damage to the local roads, see significantly increased industrial traffic and to compensate will provide negligible additional employment and no further return for the local community.

“This is a huge disappointment and threat to the local community which has seen better fortunes recently following the new station being opened on the Airdrie-Bathgate line. Indeed planned new housing developments and other investments could be at risk as people locally are already looking to put their properties on the market.

“We believe the council have failed to meet the high standards that is required of them; indeed, the reporter stated the council failed to give adequate information for his report.

“However, given the very serious nature of our concerns with regards to the report from the independent reporter, we hope you will agree to meet with us both to discuss these concerns and visit the site to see for yourself the devastating impact this will have on Caldercruix.” Neil Gray MP and Alex Neil MSP Airdrie & Shotts