SUMMARY
Minerals are vital to the Scottish economy, providing essential primary raw materials for industry. Construction aggregates, supplemented by recycled and secondary aggregates are the foundations of the built environment. This Scottish Planning Policy ( SPP) replaces NPPG 4 and provides the policy framework that planning authorities should use when preparing their development plans and in determining planning applications.
The Executive supports a positive approach to minerals planning. The SPP recommends a systematic approach to planning for minerals that includes survey, monitoring, safeguarding, site selection, operation and site restoration. Related policies should be clearly set out in development plans. To aid the planning process, the Executive has resumed minerals production surveys in association with the industry.
Mineral working may have an impact on local communities and the environment. The planning system must ensure that all minerals proposals are fully assessed so that extraction only takes place where those impacts can be made acceptable. This SPP, supported by a positive development plan framework, rigorous development management decisions, proactive monitoring and, where appropriate, enforcement, can help to ensure that the benefits of minerals developments are not obtained at the expense of unacceptable impacts on either communities or the environment.
Mineral working provides employment in rural areas, bringing associated economic benefits, supplying local needs and minimising long distance haulage. The city regions consume the greatest volumes of minerals and planning authorities for all market areas should maintain a minimum 10 year supply of construction aggregates to ensure continuity of supply, subject to other planning considerations. It is now left to planning authorities to make any provision considered appropriate for coastal exporting quarries, taking into account environmental and community considerations. Industrial and seldom-worked minerals also require to be safeguarded in development plans to provide continuity of supply, conservation of the resource and certainty to the communities affected by operations.