Grundon Sand & Gravel has announced the first stage of its second phase consultation into its plans to extract sand and gravel from land known as Purple Haze, south of Verwood.
This land has already been allocated by Hampshire County Council as a preferred area for the supply of building sand for the local area.
The proposed development would not include any landfill.
The first consultation, back in March 2019, attracted nearly 200 people. That event introduced visitors to the various site investigations that would need to be carried out over the next 12-18 months, before a planning application could be put together and submitted to Hampshire County Council, the Planning Authority.
Those tests and surveys covered a wide range of subjects – including ecology, hydrogeology, traffic and archaeology.
Most of this investigative work is now complete and Grundon has started the first stage of the planning application process. This involves confirming with Hampshire County Council the issues the company needs to address in its application. This is known as a scoping request – which forms part of the formal Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
Stewart Mitchell, Grundon’s Estates Manager explains: “The EIA is a detailed, formal technical assessment of any significant effects of a project. The scoping request seeks the council’s opinion as to what should be included in the EIA via a formal dialogue between the applicant and the council.
“This is the first stage of the planning application process – and virtually all mineral sites need to be supported by an EIA
“Once the council has responded to our scoping request we will hold a well-publicised online consultation event. We will make sure we provide several options for interested parties to become involved with our consultation programme and provide us with feedback on our proposals.
“We hope to submit our planning application, with all the formal supporting documents – including a Non-Technical Summary – towards the end of this year.”
The Friends of Ringwood Forest run a website with details about the plan and have an active Facebook group to keep people up-to-date with developments.