‘Lodges are just load of static caravans’

MANY readers may well have forgotten that an exceptionally large holiday camp was proposed to be constructed in the former quarry in Moneystone.

Back in March 2020, Staffordshire Moorlands District Council decided that the application was in suitably prepared state for examination by its Planning Applications Committee.

It is not uncommon for last-minute glitches to occur necessitating a delay such that the application is put back a month.

With Moneystone Quarry Park, however it has been put back every month since.

The next schedule PAC meeting is now set for January 14, 2021, a full 11 months since the first delay.

What does this tell us? It tells me that there are structural problems with the application that cannot be solved with any ease at all.

Meanwhile, concerned residents continue to read the multitude of documents gathered on the council’s website only to find yet more issues and contradictions, illusions and obfuscations, straightforward gaps in preparedness, as well as the inevitable ‘fake news’ praising its wonderful facilities.

The outline planning application passed by the council, as well as the ‘glossy’ promises made long before that moment, stated they would build luxury lodges around the former quarried areas.

However, what is proposed in the current application is quite simply a load of four-berth static caravans disguised by cladding to give the illusion of it being ‘a lodge’.

For me, lodges mean a wooden structure with a sloping tiled or grassed roof, with an apex of course and not a flat metal roofed camouflaged caravan.

Due to major geological issues at least a third of the site has been deferred and so the proposal now contains as high a number of

‘lodges’ as it is possible squeeze into the remaining portion of the quarry deemed by the developer as a suitable location on which to construct their holiday camp. Unfortunately for the developer they did not do their homework first.

Residents of the area have though – and continue to do so.

The deficiencies and objections continue to mount in number, some objections also coming from official bodies as can be seen on the council’s website.

In my opinion the application has reached the point where it is not possible for it to meet the necessary national and local published standards without a considerable amount of work.

I suggest instead of wasting everyone’s council tax money pursuing a lost cause, the developer should kick the current application into touch and prepare an application that addresses all known deficiencies currently identified.

They should also examine the site afresh for any other potential problems, rather doing the deskbased surveys commonly referred to in the various applications, past and present.

Since the existing environmental studies were prepared there has been much wilding of the site and therefore the developer should also now redo the long outdated environmental studies.

They might also try to come up with a proposal that is acceptable to the site’s neighbours, the residents of the Churnet Valley too.

The current proposal will destroy people’s lives with the huge increase in traffic and its associated environmental pollution, as well as the noise and nuisance their cheap and cheerful proposal will cause if constructed.

A very small number of people from further afield are supportive of the development, and even in my own mind I could perceive of the day when visitors could well enjoy the originally promised facilities along with the holidaying clientele, wondering would I possibly join them - after an appropriate gap in time of course.

Sadly for all, inspection of the application reveals the smallest set of sporting and leisure facilities

possible that could be levered into the one remaining old quarry building.

I’m not at all sure the authors of those supporting letters would consider Moneystone Quarry Holiday Park a great place to work out in a tiny, ill equipped gym, swim in a small pool, fire off a few arrows at the archery centre - or enjoy some boating on a deeply set, deep water lake - something else for which the construction is deferred to some unspecified future date.

I remain though ever hopeful that the SMDC planning committee will not be duped by news of a wonderful development at Moneystone but instead refuse the application and as a consequence make it a positive vote for protection of the beautiful Churnet Valley.

DJ Williams Foxt