BAA condemns proposed MPA fees

THE British Aggregates Association has condemned government proposals to allow mineral planning authorities to introduce fees for monitoring mineral and landfill permissions.

Calling for the rejection of plans to charge quarry operators over £1,000 a year per site for quarterly site checks, the Association says the charges would be neither fair nor reasonable for the industry as a whole, and would be disproportionately unfair for smaller mineral operators.

‘Any charging regime should be proportional to the size of the operation and value of the mineral extracted, otherwise SMEs will be disadvantaged,’ said BAA secretary Peter Huxtable. ‘A small sand and gravel operator producing 5,000 tonnes a year should not have to pay the same fee as an industrial limestone operation producing 5 million tonnes a year.’

Highlighting the industry’s record of conformity with local authorities and other stakeholders, Mr Huxtable said the UK minerals industry’s environmental credentials were among the highest in the world, and that the authorities already had the ability to take punitive action against companies when necessary.

He added that since the introduction of the aggregates levy in 2002, there had been additional impositions on the quarrying industry, including above-inflation increases in rates and business taxes. ‘Monitoring costs should already be covered under planning consent costs and in the level of business rates and national tax paid,’ he argued.

‘We believe that this proposal should be completely rejected as it brings no benefit and a lot of unnecessary burden and bureaucracy.’