Mineral planning: Time to act strategically

The UK minerals sector delivers over a million tonnes of raw materials and products every single day. Yet, from a government policy point of view, this £16bn a year business is largely ignored. Infrastructure View spoke to Mark Russell and Mark North at the Mineral Products Association and David Sandbrook at Carter Jonas, to find out why. 

The last four or five years have been something of a roller coaster for the minerals sector, according to Mark Russell, Executive Director – Planning & Mineral Resources at the Mineral Products Association (MPA), with a buoyant market for aggregates, cement and concrete for construction projects hit first by Brexit and then by the Covid-19 pandemic.  

Yet with clear signs of recovery starting to shine through, growth in the market for these construction materials has once again tapered off due to wider uncertainties in the economy caused, principally, by Russian invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis that this has exacerbated.  

“But there is no doubt that, if you if you look beyond the immediate short term, the need for the materials and products certainly isn't going to reduce,” explains Russell. He points out that the sector, which in the UK employs around 80,000 people and contributes some £6bn to annual national revenues, truly is the driver of the economy. 

“Mineral products are an unrecognised success story for the UK. The industry is self-sufficient and self-reliant and has a presence in every county and, arguably, in every town across the country,” says Russell.  

“But it isn't given the recognition or the value that it warrants, largely because supply is assumed,” he adds. “The sector only really gets attention when that availability starts to become squeezed. Supply, by and large, has always been assumed by politicians and central government, which is then reflected in weak policy guidance, and by consumers who rely on these essential resources.” 

Planning for the nation’s minerals needs 

MPA’s latest scenarios suggest that, despite ongoing economic uncertainty, Great Britain will need between 3.8 and 4.2 billion tonnes of construction aggregates over the fifteen-year period between 2020 and 2035 – the largest single material flow through the national economy. Much of this is needed to meet the nation's current expanding infrastructure construction and maintenance needs, not least as we tackle the challenge of building new assets to secure and decarbonise our energy supplies.  

David Sandbrook, Partner and Head of Minerals and Waste Management at Carter Jonas, agrees that an accurate forecast of future aggregate requirements is vital. “At present, aggregate demand is largely assessed using the rear-view mirror, based on previous years’ production and not reflecting major infrastructure projects coming over the horizon,” he explains.  

“Without an accurate forecast of future aggregate requirements, and without major projects accurately forecasting their aggregate demand, mineral planning authorities will struggle to identify where these minerals will come from,” he adds. 

Of course, predicting this demand is not an exact science and is fraught with potential uncertainty. The horrific events unfolding in Ukraine and their implications for the global markets appear to have sharpened the government's views around the need to invest in domestic energy generation. And, whether this is through new nuclear, solar farms, offshore wind or even tidal barrage, it will require a large volume of construction material. 

But, according to MPA, government departments and major project promoters and developers consistently fail to create proper plans to identify and secure the construction aggregates and materials needed to meet this need efficiently and sustainably. In the UK, the National Infrastructure Commission has tried to paint a long-term picture of infrastructure needs but, explains Russell, they are not particularly engaged with planning to meet that need in terms of minerals. The same applies to the Infrastructure Projects Authority. 

The major projects’ impact on mineral planning 

As the market ticks up and huge projects like HS2 gather pace alongside aspiration to level up and build an unprecedented number of new homes, the ongoing lack of planning for the vast quantities of crushed rock, sand and gravel is a source of frustration at MPA.  

“To meet that demand sustainably, you need to know that demand is coming,” explains Russell. “At the moment, by and large, it tends to work on a just in time delivery model, because the material has always been there and always been assumed to be there. But there has been very little consideration amongst the majority of major projects as to where material is going to come from, and how realistic it is to use some of the sources of supply that are assumed.”  

The recent failed attempt to build a tidal barrage at Swansea, he says, illustrates this point. While there was a groundswell of local support for such green energy generation proposals, the main objections came from the quarry site proposed to provide the rock and aggregate needed to build the lagoon and barrage.  

“When it came to the local planning process to supply the minerals required, there was no visibility that that the need actually even existed,” says Russell. 

Growing competition for mineral resource 

MPA has been actively engaging with government departments such as, for example, the Department for Transport (DfT) to try to help them to make a better link between their policy ambitions for transport infrastructure and the minerals that will be needed to support those ambitions.  

“If you are spending public money, why wouldn't you want to want to ensure that you're getting the most cost-effective supply option, but also the most sustainable supply option?” says Russell. “The way projects are being planned at the moment simply isn't doing that. But, by planning strategically, you can increase the certainty or the likelihood of being able to efficiently deliver the minerals required for construction.” 

Sandbrook emphasises that the Minerals team at Carter Jonas is also keen to work with infrastructure clients to develop their mineral resource strategies and help landowners and mineral companies identify prospect sites and secure the commercial development of strategic mineral reserves. 

One infrastructure project has already raised concerns over the industry’s ability to deliver the required capacity of materials while supporting the needs of the wider construction market, alongside other infrastructure projects.  

Russell adds that, without transparency of need – the ability to know what's needed, where and when – it is difficult for the industry to take the necessary steps to secure the resources. But, more fundamentally, it's difficult for the local mineral planning system to take the necessary steps, because there isn't any evidence of that material demand. 

“That's the penny that's just started to drop within the likes of DfT. They have made that link and are starting to talk increasingly with colleagues in other departments such as the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC),” says Russell.  

“There is a dawning realisation that project A may end up competing with Project B and Project C for the same material,” he adds. “So, you've got cross government departmental discussions starting to take place and, when those kinds of conversations take place and links start being made, it gives hope that more strategic thinking will result.” 

Auditing supply to meet demand 

Major projects are resource hungry, making it even more important for central government, project promoters and local authorities to work together to form that strategic approach to minerals supply. This is vital to ensuring that future supply needs are available not just for major infrastructure projects but also for the ongoing and equally important local developments. 

“There have got to be policy and regulatory drivers and MPA has, for many years, been calling for resource and material supply audits on all major infrastructure projects so we know exactly what is needed in terms of materials, and where it's going to come from,” says Mark North, Director of Planning at the Mineral Products Association.  

“It really needs to be set out upfront in the project planning and, until that happens, I really don't see resource availability getting any better,” North adds. “We do it for waste, down to the last few 100 metres cubed of waste arisings – what it is and where it will go – but there is a total disconnect when it comes to new minerals, and that is a huge frustration.” 

North highlights the fact that an NSIP can totally distort the local construction materials market and suck resource away from other developments. MPA’s estimates suggest that a single major project could add between 40 and 50 million tonnes of mineral demand for that region. Yet, he says, with little visibility on this exact number, any schedule of need is impossible to plan for, and so is likely to simply become a drain on other projects’ supply chains. 

The need for local skills   

Sandbrook points out that it is a fact that minerals can only be worked where they naturally occur, it’s all down to geology. Therefore the challenge, he says, is finding suitable sites that contain the required minerals but that are also free from planning constraints and competing developments – a very difficult challenge that means working hard with local authority and local communities to enable a regional or national demand to be met.  

“Estimates suggest that it currently takes around ten years from identifying a prospective site to selling aggregates over the weighbridge, even if all the planning stages are successfully negotiated,” says Sandbrook. “Greater clarity on volumes of material needed and a quicker planning system are therefore becoming vital to meeting demand.” 

Historically, National Aggregate Guidelines have acted as primary government planning policy to determine how much construction aggregate was needed in England over a period of time. This, explains North, was disseminated through the now defunct regional planning system, down through long established Aggregate Working Parties (AWP) which in turn determined the apportionment for each Mineral Planning Authority to provide for over a period of time.  

With the demise of regional planning with the coalition Government, a system was put in place where each individual Mineral Planning Authority would forecast its own mineral demand requirement through annual Local Aggregate Assessments (LAA). 

“At the moment, LAAs are just not functioning – the vast majority of them are not doing what they're required to do under the National Planning Policy, which is to forecast future demand for that authority area,” says North. “Mineral Planning Authorities simply don't have the expertise or the legs on the ground to carry out the assessments or the skills to do the necessary forecasts. So, the whole system is unravelling.” 

Creating a new national statement of need for mineral planning 

In the absence of National Guidelines, too often individual authorities derive their own methodology to create their Local Aggregate Assessments, which leads to a highly variable output across regions and the country.  

Russell agrees and explains that MPA is currently in discussion DLUHC and with Aggregate Working Parties over the need to update the national guidelines and ultimately find a better way to produce local and national forecasts of overall construction aggregate demand. While any market forecast is inevitably going to have an error bar, because of the assumptions you feed in, for the minerals sector the ability for this error bar to be consistent is more important.  

“A fundamental ask is for the government to produce what we've described as a national statement of need – to paint a picture of the role and importance of minerals in underpinning all aspects of its overarching vision for growth and infrastructure development,” he says.   

“If you are able to produce something that that reflects the needs that exist across all government departments and functions, you stand a much better chance of being able to get the necessary leverage to feed into the planning policies at a national scale,” Russell adds. “But it will also support the resourcing that's required locally to realise the outcomes that are needed.” 

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