Backdale Quarry

Judges will tomorrow begin hearing an appeal which could decide the fate of a long-running quarrying row in the Peak District.

The British Mountaineering Council and the Ramblers are among groups opposing a quarry company’s activities which have led to the destruction of a prime site in the national park. The row goes back 57 years to when the original permission was granted to extract minerals.

Bleaklow Industries, which owns the Backdale Quarry on Longstone Edge, is being challenged by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to limit the amount of limestone taken out of the quarry. The original 1952 planning permission was for the extraction of fluorspar. As part of the process, limestone has to be excavated, but opponents of the quarry company say the amount of fluorspar obtained is minimal, with up to 93 times the amount of limestone being taken out for every ton of fluorspar.

A public inquiry ruled that the ratio be limited to two parts limestone to one part fluorspar, but that ruling was overturned in a High Court judgement in April last year. A stop notice imposed by the Peak District National Park Authority was overturned and quarrying resumed.

Now, the court will again be asked to stop the extraction of limestone. The hearing is expected to last two days.

John Lambert, chair of the Save Longstone Edge Group – a coalition of local residents and other groups opposed to the Backdale quarrying – said: “The destruction is occurring at an alarming rate and you would be amazed if someone showed you the site and then told you it was in a National Park.

“We hope that the limestone quarrying will found to be unlawful and will be curbed immediately. Every day, more of the Park’s valuable landscape is lost forever and so it is vital that the Government is ready to intervene.”

Ruth Chambers, acting chief executive of the Campaign for National Parks, said “Quarries like Backdale, whose planning permission dates from the 1950s, can cause enormous environmental damage to the countryside if they are not subject to modern environmental standards.

“This case must now be regarded as a priority for Government intervention if landscape protection in our national parks is not to be made a laughing stock.”

A spokesperson for the British Mountaineering Council said: “The BMC has long been concerned by the national as well as the local implications and was the first national organisation to campaign against the large-scale quarrying.”

The quarry company countered: “Bleaklow has had one QC throughout since 1997 and we have shown the authority his opinion of what the permission means.

“That opinion has not changed. We say that the permission contains no limitation as to the depth of working, the quantities of minerals worked or the proportion of minerals worked.

“In contrast the planning authority has had advice from several QCs. It has refused to show us any of them so as to convince us that it is right.”

Fluorspar – calcium fluoride – is used as a flux in metal processing and in glass and ceramic production. Derbyshire Blue John, a variety of the mineral, occurs widely in Derbyshire, most notably in Blue John Cavern near Castleton.