PAGE Campaign

Welcome to Parishes Against Gravel Extraction (PAGE)

PAGE - Parishes Against Gravel Extraction -  is an alliance of eight Parish Councils from South Oxfordshire opposed to the Oxfordshire County Council Minerals and Waste Development Framework which threatens the local area with massive gravel extraction plans.

SG-03 Land adjacent to Benson Marina (view map from Oxfordshire County Council website)
SG-09 Land north of Drayton St Leonard, Berinsfield and Newington (view map)
SG-13 Land between Dorchester, Overy, Shillingford, Warborough and Benson (view map) 
SG-59 Land at Stadhampton, bordering on SG-09 (view map)

Originally formed in 2003, PAGE has successfully opposed gravel extraction in the area for the last eight years.  

PAGE uses an evidence-based approach to opposition, involving experts from the fields of archaeology, ecology, landscape impact, geology, hydrology, economics, agriculture and transport to prevent gravel extraction from devastating our local communities.    

PAGE needs your support now!  

Join our protest group, donate to our fundraising appeal, subscribe to our email newsletters, and get involved!   

      
 
 

Oxfordshire County Council Minerals Consultation

The County Council are currently conducting a consultation into the draft Minerals Plan.  All the documents can be found on the County Council website:

Oxfordshire County Council - Minerals Plan Consultation 2011

PAGE have produced a report in conjunction with our planning consultants and we will be submitting this by the end of October.  Although we continue to express a number of issues and concerns, we are broadly in support of the draft plan which proposes the continued extraction of sand and gravel from existing workings in West Oxfordshire. 

The consultation period ends on 31st October 2011. 

Visit by Baroness Andrews, Chair, English Heritage

From left:  Graham Keevill, Chris Welch, Baroness Andrews, Richard Douglas, Dr Andy Brown, Lorraine Lindsay-Gale

We welcomed a visit by Baroness Andrews, the Chair of English Heritage to the PAGE Campaign this morning. 

Accompanied by English Heritage colleagues Dr Andy Brown, Regional Director, and Chris Welch, Inspector, Baroness Andrews visited the Wittenham Clumps to view the landscape across the whole of the PAGE area. 

Meeting with PAGE Chairman Richard Douglas, County Heritage Champion and Councillor Lorraine Lindsay-Gale and archaeologist Graham Keevil, we discussed the archaeological discoveries made by the PAGE Campaign in 2010 and how these add to the rich and compelling story of continuous human existence in the area since Palaeolithic times. 

Baroness Andrews was highly impressed by the actions of our local communities to protect their heritage and countryside, and we gained useful insights on how we can continue with the campaign to protect our area into the future.

 

County Council Cabinet meeting - 16 February

Following the submission of the Atkins report on minerals requirements, the Oxfordshire County Council Cabinet agreed the recommendation to put the preferred Minerals Strategy to public consultation and to write to central government to gain agreement on a reduced minerals quota for Oxfordshire.

The preferred Minerals Strategy was agreed in October, and there have been a number of amendments including the news that any minerals from South Oxfordshire would be met by the Cholsey area "as being the least constrained."  This compares to the previously identified areas of Drayton St Leonard / Stadhampton and Clifton Hampden.  Although this looks like welcome news for the PAGE communities, the Campaign team are keeping a close eye on the situation as there is still some resistance from the West Oxfordshire councillors to the preferred strategy.

The next step will be a countywide public consultation on both the preferred Waste and Minerals strategies in June / July 2011.

The Cabinet papers can be downloaded from the County Council website (scroll down to agenda item 20/11)

Atkins report on local minerals requirements

At the end of 2010, the County Council commissioned consultants Atkins to produce a robust local assessment of the quantities of sand and gravel and crushed rock that need to be supplied from quarries in Oxfordshire over the period to 2030.

This report also considered the potential supply of secondary and recycled materials and cross-boundary movements of minerals and was submitted to a County Council Cabinet meeting in Febriary 2011.   The report will be used as part of the evidence to central government to reduce the minerals target imposed on Oxfordshire.

The report can be downloaded from the County Council website.

 

The County Council decides

Yesterday, the Oxfordshire County Council Cabinet approved the Minerals and Waste Working Group recommendation to pursue in the short to medium term the extraction of sand and gravel in the existing areas of working at Lower Windrush Valley, Eynsham/ Cassington/ Yarnton, Radley( including Nuneham Courtenay), Sutton Courtenay and Caversham (known as Option 1).

However, the medium to longer term supply sources will be re-assessed once future production targets have been established.  The target of 2.1mtpa is still in force until the County Council can agree a figure based on new evidence and a robust argument.  The County Council will be appointing a consultant to carry out this work, with results due at the end of this year or early 2011.

Continuing pressure exists to develop new working areas in the south of the county because there are limited sand and gravel resources remaining in Sutton Courtenay.  Additionally, there is a continuing concern of the cumulative impact of mineral workings on the local communities, landscape and lorry traffic in the Lower Windrush Valley and the Eynsham/Cassington/Yarnton areas.

Depending on the outcome of this assessment of future local sand and gravel needs, potential new sites in the south of the county have been identified as:

- Clifton Hampden
- Stadhampton and Drayton St Leonard (SG09&SG59)
- Cholsey

OCC state that the Warborough/Benson/Shillingford area is constrained by the presence of SAMs and Grade 1 agricultural land whereas the northern part is deemed to have few environmental constraints to prevent future sand and gravel extraction.  PAGE disagree with this view and the Steering Committee have agreed to continue with the campaign to defend the northern area against any further threats in the medium to longer term.

A key consideration for the possible inclusion of new working areas will be the proximity to markets. The main locations for growth are Bicester, Oxford and the Science Vale area which includes Didcot, Wantage and Grove.

So, whilst this is an excellent result in the short to medium term, the threat has not yet passed.  The PAGE Campaign will continue to pursue our two aims of reducing the production targets for sand and gravel, and to defend ALL our areas against future minerals exploitation.

We anticipate that the timetable will be over the next two years and will no doubt include various consultations and examinations in public:

December 2010 - Assessment of local need completed
January 2011 - Minerals and Waste Plan Working Group consider implications of assessment and draft mineral policies
February 2011 - Cabinet to consider draft minerals Core Strategy
Spring 2011 - Public consultation of draft minerals Core Strategy
By end of 2011 - Minerals and Waste Core Strategy to be published for formal representations
Early 2012 - Submission to Secretary of State.

More news to follow...

 

More photos from the PAGE Country Day

A big thank you to William Scott Adams for photographing the PAGE Country Day.  He has taken some fantastic photos of the riders through our wonderful countryside.  A slideshow of the Will's photos is shown below.  If you would like to order copies of these photos, please contact Will via email: williamscottadams@hotmail.com

Oxfordshire County Council decision due - 19th October

The Oxfordshire County Council Cabinet will meet on the 19th October to debate minerals policy for the county as part of the Minerals and Waste Development Framework 2011-2026.  

PAGE will make representations to County Councillors at this meeting, and having submitted our interim evidence to planning officers in August this year, we expect that this meeting will confirm the future locations for minerals extraction in Oxfordshire.

The PAGE area is listed in two of the three spatial options that are under consideration, so the meeting will be a key turning point in the PAGE Campaign.  We will keep you informed with posts to this site and on Twitter.

Fieldwalking - thank you to all our supporters

Many thanks to everyone who turned up to the fieldwalking surveys over the last two weekends. 

There were a great many highlights from each of the three locations, and we hope to post further news once these finds have been considered and verified.  

We would also like to reschedule a survey in one of the Warborough fields and will post news of this in due course.

In the meantime, if anyone would like to join in with the sorting and cataloguing of the finds, then please email us at fieldwalking@pagecampaign.org

Fieldwalking on Sunday 10th October

There is a change to the plan for fieldwalking on Sunday 10th October.

We originally planned to be walking at Warborough, but we will now be at Overy instead.

The Overy surveys were cancelled due to the adverse weather last Sunday.  However, the farmer has kindly given us permission to go back to Overy this Sunday.   As the PAGE Campaign has made a major new Roman discovery in this area, we feel that this is too great an opportunity to pass by.

In addition, the Warborough fields have been heavily ploughed and we are concerned that there is a risk of twisted ankles.  The other Warborough field of interest is currently being sown, and we should avoid interrupting the workers.  The Warborough fields were surveyed as part of the 2003 Campaign.   We may well organise another fieldwalking day in Warborough at a later day.  News of any future opportunities will be posted here and on the Facebook Group.

Please email fieldwalking@pagecampaign.org if you would like to take part in our fieldwalking surveys this weekend.  Please contact Steve Thompson on 07909 504439 if you have any questions.

PAGE Country Day - riders photos

Thank you to everyone who made the PAGE Country Day a great success!   With over 50 riders taking part, the day was a tremendous celebration of the beautiful countryside that we all currently enjoy but is now under future threat of destruction from sand and gravel extraction.

Below is a slideshow of the riders as they started the course.  Please feel free to download individual photos from our Flickr pages.   Our photographer was also on hand to take pictures of riders on the course.  We shall post links to these photos over the next few days.