Proposed quarry 'like a gun to our heads' - villagers

People living in a village on the edge of the Broads have described proposals for a new quarry as "like having a gun to our heads".

Breedon Trading Limited wants to dig a 55-acre gravel pit in the Norfolk village of Haddiscoe, near Lowestoft.

Villagers said they were concerned about the potential impact of noise, dust and an increase in HGV traffic.

Norfolk County Council said the quarry "would serve the sand and gravel requirements of the county" and that it was finalising its "assessment of the application".

If approved, the gravel pit - roughly the size of 26 football pitches - would be the fourth quarry to be dug in Haddiscoe since the 1960s.

Marcus Aldren, treasurer of the Stopit2 campaign group, set up to fight the proposals, said villagers had already spent £40,000 trying to prevent the development.

"If we get a hot summer like we had two years ago, dangerous silica dust that you get from gravel quarries will be blanketing the village, and villagers will be breathing it in," he said.

"The village successfully fought a similar proposal for this site in 2014 and it just feels like a cloud hanging over us."

The application submitted in 2014 included a cement processing plant which does not feature in the latest plans.

Instead, the gravel would be taken to nearby Norton Subcourse quarry to be processed.

Haddiscoe is thought to have rich gravel deposits left behind by a former glacier.

Daryl Packer, a former mine engineer, lives in a bungalow 4m (13ft) from the proposed site boundary.

He said: "I'm seriously worried as this is my dream home and now I want to move.

"It's going to have a massive impact on the value of the house… An estate agent has already said that the entire village has been reduced by 15 to 20%."

The Stopit2 campaign claims to have found flaws in Breedon Trading's planning application.

It said the company had vastly overestimated the amount of gravel it could extract, as a 100m (about 330ft) exclusion zone to protect nearby homes from dust and noise had been omitted from detailed drawings.

It also claimed surveys had "completely ignored" the risk posed by fine particulate dust.

Breedon Trading, which hopes to extract 650,000 tonnes of gravel over seven years, declined to comment.

A bill requiring new quarries to be dug at least 1km (just over half a mile) from settlements  was brought before Parliament by Labour MP for Warwick and Leamington Matt Western in 2021.

The bill is awaiting its second reading.

A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: "We rely on a steady and adequate supply of minerals to provide building materials for infrastructure, housing and construction, fuel for heating our homes and transportation.

"The extraction of minerals contributes to securing sustainable growth across the country."

A spokesperson for Norfolk County Council, which has a minimum quarry provision, said: "This application will need to be considered by our regulatory planning committee, which is next due to meet on 23 April and 24 May.

"We are currently finalising our assessment of the application to bring to a forthcoming committee but this will not be confirmed until one week prior to the meeting when the papers are published on our website."

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