Mineral Resource Assessment

Name: Ruddlesden Geotechnical
Price range: $

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) requires local authorities to define mineral safeguarding areas to protect the known locations of specific minerals from sterilisation, for example by development of the land. The local authority must also define mineral consulting areas based on the safeguarding areas, safeguard existing minerals processing/ extraction facilities and to extract minerals prior to development, if development is to take place.

It is the planning authority’s responsibility to safeguard important mineral resources and waste facilities from sterilisation by other forms of development and to ensure that sensitive development does not encroach into areas where it could be adversely affected by the working of minerals or the operation of waste facilities.

The local authority achieves this by the delineation of consultation zones, opposing applications that will sterilise important resources or be adversely affected by existing facilities and seeking to secure prior extraction of resources where practicable.

Therefore, in certain areas of the country, where development is to take place, the local authority may require a mineral resource assessment, to consider the quality and quantity of minerals beneath the site as well as the effect on mineral resources beyond the confines of the site.

Case Study

Mineral Resource Assessments, Dorset

Mineral Resource Assessments have been undertaken for three sites in close proximity to each other for the same developer on the outskirts of village near Poole, in Dorset, where minerals resource assessments are commonly required due to the quarrying of sand and gravel deposits. Ruddlesden geotechnical carried out site-specific desk-based assessments of the superficial and bedrock geology and potential mineral resources, including the study of geological maps and memoirs, historical data, nearby borehole records, site investigation reports and British Geological Survey Mineral Resource Information for Development Plans. The mineral resource assessments, which were undertaken at the pre-application planning stage, as part of the viability assessment, identified that deposits beneath two of the sites were unlikely to be quarried, whereas further work was required to assess the risks at the third site. This information was used by the developer to help prioritise the developments.