An Open Letter to Hampshire County Council

Re:                                               Hamble Airfield Quarry Development by Cemex

Planning Ap Number:               HCC/2021/0787

11^th December, 2023

From:                                     Professor Bill Blain, Hamble

Dear Sir/Madam

Over the past few weeks Hampshire Country Council will have received many letters and emails from residents on the Hamble Peninsula setting out their objections to CEMEX’s proposal to dig a massive “Urban Quarry” in the centre of our village. Local opinion is clear: The quarry should be blocked as it creates a substantial risk of an Environmental and Economic disaster across the Hamble River area. The balance of risks vs returns demonstrates the only party set to benefit from the quarry will be the landowner – Persimmon, the UK homebuilder.

Like many of my fellow residents I am deeply concerned by the fact CEMEX staff are already measuring for access roads and apparently checking for discarded wartime ammunition on the site – demonstrating they consider it a done-deal.

We fear our rights as residents and voters will be trampled, traded away in some sordid back-room deal between deep-pocketed corporate greed and the council. The in-depth current research residents have commissioned and done will be ignored, neglected and forgotten – our objections left unconsidered on a hard-drive somewhere deep in the Council’s basement. Hence my decision to make this a public open-letter to share with government, politicians, the media and institutional investors to consider in relation to their investments in Persimmon and CEMEX. There are important aspects to consider in terms of risks, local democracy, bureaucracy, carbon mitigation and sustainability.

I have spent my nearly 40-year career in finance and economics as an investment banker, an economic and financial advisor to major companies and governments. I am an honorary Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot-Watt University, specialising in Economics, ESG (Environment, Social and Governance issues), Sustainability and Investment Management. I am a regular commentator on market matters, business and sustainability on the media, including the BBC.

I have looked at the proposed Hamble Quarry in detail and reached a number of conclusions that cause me deep concern. The project raises clear and significant environmental, health and safety, and economic risks. The risks are weighted against the interests of the community who stand to lose if anything goes wrong, while Persimmon and CEMEX currently face negligible downside real risks.

Any decision on whether to allow the project to proceed must be based on a clear understanding and thorough analysis of the risks, how these will be mitigated, how likely to succeed any mitigation will be, what penalties will be imposed if not, and the completion of a clear economic analysis of the proposal’s benefits versus the many risks it clearly raises.

In their glossy corporate presentations CEMEX have repeatedly claimed to the Council and Residents “the environmental and amenity aspects” for the proposal have been “assessed in detail”, and the application demonstrates “there will not be any unacceptable impacts on the local community.”  The locals do not believe them.

The residents are not prepared to accept CEMEX’s blithe no-harm assurances. They have shown CEMEX does not have experience successfully managing other “urban quarries” and that many of their mitigation claims are based on old and irrelevant data. CEMEX appears to have ignored professional opinion of the health and safety, clean air and nuisance aspects of digging a quarry right next to schools and housing. They have not addressed consequential risk of substantial hydrological degradation, flooding and water quality deterioration that will inevitably result if the gravel is extracted.

The residents have utilised modern data mining techniques, information processing and the rich talent and expertise of local professionals to fully consider these risks. They have shown CEMEX has vastly underestimated the likely congestion, the health concerns and flooding risk, the environmental damage, and wholly ignored the likely economic impact on the village. We have highlighted the likely long-term economic damage of destroying the local marine industry along the Hamble River and the village economy. The proposed development will blight the lives of residents for decades – resulting in significant losses in employment, the value of their homes, and quality of life.

The council has to decide – who is right? Locals or big corporates?

Who should the council listen to? The paid employees of a corporate with a vested interest, no local connections or even local experience to mine the land, or the residents who are entitled to the enjoyment of their homes, environment and quality of life? Locals are objecting not as NIMBYs (not in my back yard), but because they foresee very clear damage.

However, before choosing between corporate greed vs residents rights, consider the question: Why is a quarry necessary?

Regional governments, including Hampshire Country Council, have a statutory duty to ensure access to strategic mineral reserves, which includes Sand and Gravel for construction. These plans are subject to ongoing revision. Its is absolutely clear these will change again in light of the importance and duty to reduce UK carbon emissions.

At present the construction industry is one of the highest emitters in the UK of carbon dioxide. Strenuous efforts to reduce construction CO2 is underway. Quarries create an enormous carbon load extracting aggregates. In recent years great efforts have been made to reduce emissions in the building sector, and the most promising route in construction has been through the recycling of construction waste to create low emission concrete and other materials. This is far more sustainable and beneficial for the environment than digging out sand and gravel for further processing.

At present there is some 11 years supply of qravel in storage across Hampshire. In future the demand for gravel is likely to decline substantially. As construction waste (from demolitions and renovation) is increasingly recycled into building materials, it is creating a low emissions sustainable materials sector. In contrast, quarries are not sustainable, create massive negative economic, environmental and health impacts, while generating the largest carbon emissions.

Minimising the environmental and carbon impact of quarries, and encouraging a sustainable construction industry, is an ambition shared by most socially aware construction businesses. Unfortunately CEMEX and the landowner, Persimmon are not so enlightened. They simply see a profit opportunity – environment be dammed.

Were there a demonstrable new requirement for Sand and Gravel, the Council is no doubt aware of the many thousands of tonnes of (exactly the same) sand and gravel dredged from Southampton Water and the Solent every year. CEMEX claim this material is unsuitable for construction, but any first-year construction engineering student could teach them how to wash and prepare it at relatively low cost without the associated impact caused by a quarry. Any cost benefit analysis will show that rather than take the risk the quarry clearly entails, it would be more effective and less risky to use dredged materials at a slightly higher overall cost.

In view of the very high risks of the quarry in relation to the environment, the local economy, public health and safety, and the hydrological risks of flooding and the likely damage to the sensitive river environment, it seems clears the risks of the likely disruption the quarry will cause will greatly exceed any benefit it may create. In fact the only benefit CEMEX claim is that the sand and gravel may be used at some point in the future (when the current reserves are exhausted) to build. It is likely that over the next 10-years reclaimed materials will completely replace quarried materials. Therefore the Quarry is simply not needed – it is already obsolete.

In light of the declining demand for sand and gravel, the proposals to quarry make no financial, economic or strategic sense. The quarry will certainly make no significant profits for CEMEX – unless they are receiving income for managing the quarry from other reason. Residents have repeatedly asked for information on financial agreements and contracts between CEMEX and Persimmon relating to how the quarry will be financed. The suspicion is CEMEX are being paid by Persimmon to quarry – and that is the only source of returns on the quarry.

The reality is the proposal to quarry is not about meeting any clear economic need or for strategic planning reasons. CEMEX are not proposing to dig this quarry to provide Hampshire with a strategic building gravel resource – that is a complete distraction.

CEMEX are working with Persimmon to monetise the homebuilders’ ownership of the airfield. Permission cares not a jot about gravel, the airfield or the costs and damage they will do to Hamble over decades – their only concern is to maximise future profits.

This raises important questions about social justice, probity, the environment and unconstrained corporate greed. UK homebuilder Persimmon is set to reap massive future profits if they can convert the airfield into brownfield site. Persimmon has two potential routes to monetise the airfield site by turning it into a quarry:

• Once the quarry is backfilled it will count as brownfield land with a greater likelihood of garnering permission to build homes on the site  – previous applications to build home have repeatedly been blocked on the lack of transport and local infrastructure grounds.
• Or, they will seek to change the infill permission for the quarry from construction waste to landfill – which currently pays very high gate fees making it most profitable use for former quarries. (The consequences of a stinking landfill site polluting the water-table and leaching into the river have not been considered by CEMEX.)

If this quarry development is approved it will provide further evidence of how the planning process is loaded against the people, and erode trust and confidence in local democracy.

While CEMEX would have us believe they have the multiple risks the quarry raises covered, they do not. The costs of mitigating these risks will vastly outweigh any of the negligible benefits. If anything CEMEX has promised goes wrong – who will pay the massive economic and social costs of their failure?

• CEMEX have repeatedly failed to demonstrate their competency to manage the multiple risks associated with an urban quarry. They have no experience of successfully running a quarry like this in the heart of a busy and prosperous village.
• Hamble Lane is acknowledged to be the UK’s most congested B-Road. There are no discernible or likely plans to upgrade it. CEMEX claim 140 additional lorry movements per day will have no impact – but they have never experienced the delays when the road is blocked or the difficulties getting ambulances into and out of the village.
• CEMEX’s glossy brochure says digging a quarry spewing dust and waste into three schools and numerous houses immediately adjacent to the site will create no air-quality or lung health issues. All the published medical research says otherwise.
• CEMEX don’t acknowledge or plan for the rich ecosystem of plans and animals on the airfield – including rare plants, protected species like Skylarks and Owls – that will be displaced.
• The basics of hydrology seem to have escaped CEMEX. The reason it was an airfield was because of its excellent drainage – rain falling on the site is filtered through the gravel and into the river, avoiding flooding in the village. Replace the gravel with infill and there is an immediate flooding risk and water-table degredation. The likelihood of waste materials leaching into the river, creating a consequential environmental crisis will be very high.
• When the village inevitably floods because the gravel is removed, residents will immediately find their insurance premiums rise or they are denied flood insurance – as a direct result of CEMEX and Persimmon’s action.

In terms of economic damage, CEMEX claim the quarry is vital to provide Sand and Gravel that will be used to “deliver new education, health, transport and employment development.” As noted above, this claim Sand and Gravel is vital to economic growth does not stand up to examination – and is years out of date. It is not green. It is not sustainable. Cleaner, less impactful sources of construction materials are increasingly available.

In coming years net-zero policies and directives will ensure the demand for gravel obtained from quarries will fall to effectively zero. At the same time, the demand for construction waste to reprocess into low emission building materials, including concrete will increase. This means it will be impossible for CEMEX to access the Construction Waste they plan to infill the site with – making the likelihood of a change to general, high-pollution landfill more likely. The quarry plan breaches every aspect of current Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) considerations, and in light of the recent advance in the recycling of construction waste is not sustainable.

Meanwhile, the construction of the quarry will cause massive economic damage to the world-class marine industry that is based on the Hamble River, while the increased road congestion will cause substantive staffing problems for other businesses established in the area. The economic damage done to the local economy will be absolute – effectively destroying the local economy of shops, marine based industries, tourism and light industry.

• The local economy is at severe risk: marine businesses will suffer as yachts are moved off the Hamble due to dust and noise pollution – this will impact the whole Hamble Valley area including Swanwick, Sarisbury Green and Warsash. As the river degrades from waste leaching it’s likely the large number of holidaymakers and sailors who come to Hamble to the benefit of the economy will not return. The yacht-clubs, bars, pubs and cafes around the river will suffer and become unsustainable.
• As congestion on the road increases, large employers in boat design, maintenance and light industrial businesses which will find it increasingly difficult to retain staff and will exit the area.

I urge the Council to reject this application on the basis that the risks it raises in terms of health, economic and environmental dangers vastly outweigh any slim benefit it creates – effectively the only “positive” aspect to the plan is it meets obsolete strategic planning resource rules. It is not sustainable. It raises massive delivery risks.

From the perspective of the residents of Hamble vs the corporate greed of Persimmon it is utterly unjust that a big firm be given the right to blight residents’ rights to fair enjoyment of their homes and the beautiful Hamble Valley just to make Persimmon richer. That is unjust in the extreme.

Yours truly,

Professor Bill Blain

Honorary Professor of Social Sciences and Economics, The Edinburgh Business School and Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh

Resident of Hamble