Plans unveiled for limestone quarry on 82 hectares countryside site near Peterborough

Plans are being drawn up to create a huge limestone quarry in a countryside site near Wittering.

Construction industry supplier Mick George is hoping to extract seven million to eight million tonnes of limestone from a 82 hectares site at Easton Lodge over 20 to 25 years.

Now the Huntingdon-based company has asked Peterborough City Council what details planners will need from an environmental impact assessment ahead of the submission of a planning application.

The proposed quarry site sits next to the border with Northamptonshire and the site of special scientific interest Bonemills Hollow.

The council says it envisages that the quarry will generate about 200 lorry movements per day with 100 movements into the site and then 100 out of the site.

It says this would include the exportation of processed mineral, and recycled aggregate along with the importation of suitable inert materials for restoration of the site much of which will be delivered on a ‘return load’ basis.

In a letter to the council, John Gough, the planning director for Mick George, states: “A new access point would be established onto the A47 to the south of the site where the site office complex will be located although the crushing and screening of the limestone will be undertaken by mobile plant progressively across the site.

"The access road to the public highway will be surfaced and wheel cleaning facilities provided to ensure all HGVs exiting the site do so in a clean state.

Mr Gough says the site will be progressively reinstated and will be ‘subject to an aftercare management programme to ensure the highest quality of restoration is achieved.’

He adds: “The scheme will provide ecological gains, thereby improving biodiversity and satisfying local and national creative conservation policies, whilst importantly ensuring that all of the “best and most versatile” land can be reinstated to its original quality.”

Mick George say that the quarry would help Peterborough City Council and Cambridgeshire County Council ensure the supply of limestone demanded by national policy.

John Bradshaw, chairman of Wittering Parish Council, said the parish council would make its views known when officially notified of the planning application.