Backdale Quarry

Campaigners are urging the Government to buy up quarrying rights to save a national park beauty spot at the centre of a six-year planning battle.

The move came at a meeting last week between Andy Tickle of the Friends of the Peak District and Environment Secretary Hilary Benn during his visit to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the introduction of the law which led to the setting up of national parks.

The legal row over Longstone Edge and Backdale Quarry near Bakewell, Derbyshire, rumbled on for years and centred on a permission granted to allow extraction of rare minerals in 1952.

Last month, the Law Lords threw out an application by quarry owner Bleaklow Industries against enforcement action by the Peak District National Park Authority to limit the quarrying. The case was complicated by the fact that, despite the original mineral permission being for the extraction of fluorspar, most of the material removed from Backdale was limestone.

The Longstone Edge Coalition, which included the British Mountaineering Council and the Ramblers, had long campaigned for the ending of quarrying at the site.

Mr Tickle, a member of the coalition and head of planning for the Friends of the Peak District, said: “We urge the Government to put in place the funds to buy out this quarry permission now. We must protect this irreplaceable land once and for all from quarrying devastation, before it is too late.

“It’s been a long battle for the community and the national park authority against the quarry operators: six years of heart ache, frustration and appalling landscape vandalism.We have now won the legal battle, but another operator could still use planning loopholes to continue their wanton destruction of this pristine land.

“We urge the Government, on behalf of all that care about protecting our national parks, to finish the job. We must win the war as well as the battle by buying Backdale out from the quarry operators.”

Backdale Quarry is operated by MMC under the mineral permission, which runs until 2042.

The coalition warned Mr Benn, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,  that the only way to protect Longstone Edge properly is for the Government to offer a ‘buy out’ package including purchase of the land and the minerals rights, and ultimately revoke the old permission. A spokesperson for the group said that, in the 60th anniversary year of the National Parks Act, this would be ‘entirely fitting’.

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. The mineral is also used in the production of toothpaste.