RMC
If you look at the old newspapers from the beginning of last century you’ll find adverts for a ‘Holton Gravel Pits’ belonging to a Herbert Broom (he lived for a time at Mill House, hence you might hear the nearby S-bends called ‘Broom’s Corners’). But I’m pretty sure now these earlier pits were not on the site we know today as Holton Pits, but instead were adjacent to the area – so either in the grounds of Mill House (opp. the old Cherry Tree pub) or, perhaps more likely, on the right-hand side as you enter the pits from the village (below the mill). So more digging is necessary to get to the bottom of that one!
In 2000 the previous owners of the Holton Pit site, ‘RMC’, acquired planning permission to extend their excavations there northwards towards Beccles Road – so well beyond the site we know today – into the field to the north.
2005 CEMEX and the Wangford Exchange
In March 2005, following their takeover of ‘RMC’, CEMEX took ownership of both the Holton site and the nearby Wangford Quarry.
In the October of 2005, CEMEX applied to SCC to extend their workings at Wangford. However, to help ‘sweeten’ this application for an area within an AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) they offered to surrender the extant permission at the Holton site and in so doing offered to restore the area that previously had been worked at Holton – i.e the area to the south of Blyford Lane around the main pit.
The application for the Wangford Quarry extension was eventually passed in June 2007, where a legally-binding ‘Section 106 Agreement’ was made between Suffolk County Council and Cemex (and two other parties: ‘RMC’, and the landowners at Wangford) – to restore the Holton site during the subsequent five year period.
Six years later, in September 2013, Cemex applied to SCC seeking to vary some of the conditions attached to the June 2007 permission at Wangford, and as part of this application they set out the outline details of the restoration work they had undertaken at the Holton site since 2007
Where, in summarising, they state:
“12.10 – The Company [Cemex] believe the principles of the 106 Legal Agreement have been adhered to with implementation and adherence of the routing agreement [this at the Wangford site], surrender of Holton St Peter reserves and restoration and management of Holton Pit. The Company shall continue to undertake an annual review of the site and any maintenance work as deemed necessary.
“12.11 – The Company seek to continue to implement the routing agreement, annual payments to the County Council and erection of interpretation boards at Holton Pit. It is not considered that any additional formal aftercare is required at Holton Pit (e.g. maintain public, trimming of hedgerows and planting (including sycamore)) [emphasis added].“
Does this 2013 application mark the end of this S106 agreement with regard to the ‘restoration’ of the Holton Pit site?
Either way, the meat of all this lies with some of the wording used in the legal agreement – such as: “It is the intention of the Operator and the Second Owner [i.e. Cemex and RMC]
to prepare a restoration scheme for Holton St Peter Site B and to implement such a scheme to create a public open space with permissive public access provision consistent with the identification of Holton St Peter Site B as a County Wildlife Site.”
Schedule 2 of the agreement sets out the ‘Outline Restoration Strategy’ for the Holton site, which I’m sure will be of interest if you haven’t had sight of it before. But what we really need to see is the ‘detailed restoration scheme’, as described in Clause 3(iv) of the agreement. But above that, we need to know how (or if) any such scheme was implemented by Cemex, if its implementation was monitored (or ultimately signed-off) by SCC, and to find what record there may be of all this. Indeed, can we really be sure any of it took place at all? From their standpoint it seems clear from their Planning Statement that Cemex considered themselves to have undertaken sufficient restoration work during this 5 year period. But did SCC simply take them at their word on this?
Despite the important details found in these two documents, there are still as many questions as there are answers.
2006 Suffolk County Council Monitoring Report
‘The site has potential as a nature conservation education resource for school parties in partnership with SCC, SWT, Holton Parish Council (Woodbridge Angling Club?) and public information boards should be provided
Kaliwood 