Ground-breaking new project to address quarry scars in National Parks

15 January 2003 

An innovative new national project aimed at addressing the damaging impacts of quarrying in Britain’s National Parks has been launched by the Council for National Parks [1] and Sheffield-based, Friends of the Peak District [2]. 

Financed by the government’s Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF), a fund fed by a tax on the quarrying industry, the Old Minerals Permissions project will identify the most damaging operations in National Parks and develop strategies to best control them and prevent dormant permissions from being reactivated.

“Before the designation of National Parks in the 1940s and 50s, quarry permissions were handed out too freely,” said Nick Denton, the project’s newly appointed researcher based in Sheffield.  “These simply wouldn’t be allowed today as they don’t meet modern environmental standards. This new project represents a fitting way of recycling quarry profits into reducing damage to England’s finest countryside.”

Initial investigations will concentrate on the Peak District National Park which is severely affected by more than 70 old minerals permissions, more than any other National Park.

A team of four, drawn from the Friends of the Peak District and London-based CNP, are being funded by the Countryside Agency to complete the project. 

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