Water park faces tough conditions before it can go ahead
HUNDREDS OF LETTERS HAVE BEEN SENT OPPOSING SCHEME FOR DERELICT QUARRY
A WATER park resort developer has been given a long list of demands to counter widespread objections and shortfalls.
Derbyshire County Council has served a Regulation 25 notice on BMET Ltd, the firm behind plans to turn the derelict Crich Quarry site into the Amber Rock Resort.
BMET submitted its plans in February, three years after the Local Democracy Reporting Service broke the news of the project
After key objections from organisations and hundreds of letters from opposing residents, the county council has served a formal notice to the developer – demanding widespread extra information before a decision can be reached. Otherwise, under environmental impact legislation, the application would be rejected on the grounds of insufficient information.
The developer must explain how it intends to cut and fill in parts of the derelict quarry to make way for the resort, along with details of the vibration impact and blasting scheme, and traffic movements.
It must also provide more details about how the scheme will handle traffic when it is up and running and assessments of junctions around the site to examine the potential impact of the resort and potential road safety concerns.
The county council’s own highways department says in the notice “there are too many outstanding issues not addressed”, also “strongly” reiterating that the resort “must not become a visitor attraction for daily car-borne visitors, apart from anybody arriving on foot, by bus or bicycle”.
Its flood authority department is currently recommending objection to the scheme due to a lack of information over flood risk concerns and how water diverted or impacted by the scheme would be dispersed safely.
The council’s landscape officer has submitted a lengthy statement detailing how the resort’s impact on the surrounding area has not been explored. This includes the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site, ancient woodland, numerous areas of “environmental sensitivity”, conservation areas and listed buildings – including the Crich Stand military memorial which sits on the lip of the quarry itself. The landscape officer says this has been “under-assessed” and claims there has been “no recognition of the wider landscape sensitivity…within a landscape of significant landscape value and sensitivity at the county scale”.
They also say the impact of further quarrying required to convert the site into a resort has not been assessed and say a number of key viewpoints, from which the site is clearly visible, have not been investigated.
The officer writes: “We would need to be satisfied – and it be demonstrated to us – that the site could indeed be developed without impacting on the essential qualities of the surrounding landscape at night particularly with regard to views from the World Heritage Site and its buffer zone.”
Historic England also says documentation assessing of the scheme is “insufficient”, particularly the potential impact on Crich Stand, along with light pollution and further information is required.
Derbyshire Wildlife Trust also says the supplied information is “insufficient” and that a suitable biodiversity impact assessment needs to be submitted, referencing badgers, reptiles, bats and peregrine falcons.
The county council also says a travel plan, costing £5,550 over five years, needs to be drawn together to monitor the site’s impact if it were to be approved, along with a plan to provide money to improve surrounding footpaths, bus stops and cycleways.
Legally, this overall environmental impact assessment must be decided separately before the application for the scheme is decided. The applicant must supply sufficient responses to all of the required extra information before the application can proceed. The response must be publicly disclosed and advertised to the public and interested parties and consultees.
BMET’s plans include a 152-bed hotel, 128 straw-bale lodges, an indoor water park, 210 holiday apartments, an indoor/outdoor climbing centre and a heritage centre, a cliff-top restaurant, sports complex and more. Application documents claim the project will have the “highest sustainable credentials” through reuse of the brownfield site, widespread tree planting and rainwater harvesting, and use of renewable energy such as waterpowered lifts and solar panels. It would create 561 full-time and part-time jobs when complete, with 200 people employed for the construction which would take five years, if approved.
We would need to be satisfied that the site could be developed without impacting on the surrounding landscape