At Longstone Edge, between Calver and Great Longstone, two public footpaths have been lost and a green road diverted by quarry operators at Backdale. The extraordinary decision of Mr Justice Sullivan that the approval in 1952 of a planning request to extract fluorspar from rakes (wide seams of fluorspar) should allow quarry operators to take and sell a whole hillside if there are traces of fluorspar could mean that many more than these paths will be lost and a great new hole could appear in the view from Baslow Edge and the other surrounding tops.<\/p>\n
His decision was published on 31st March. As it was against a decision by the Planning Inspectorate an appeal should be lodged by the government, although the Peak Park also have the option and are planning to exercise it. This appeal needs to be lodged by 21st April, so the government must be persuaded next week.<\/p>\n
Please write to your MP to urge them to press the government to take action (to press Hazel Blears to appeal and Hilary Benn to help fund revocation of the permission). Many letters have already gone to Patrick McLoughlin, the local MP. Pressure on other MPs will show that destruction of a National Park is not just an NIMBYist issue.<\/p>\n
For more info see Save Longstone Edge Group website<\/a>, or National Park website<\/a>. Also look out for a press-statement from an unprecedented coalition of environmental and amenity groups including Friends of the Earth, BMC, RSPB, Friends of the Peak District, CPRE, Ramblers Association and Plantlife.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At Longstone Edge, between Calver and Great Longstone, two public footpaths have been lost and a green road diverted by quarry operators at Backdale. The extraordinary decision of Mr Justice Sullivan that the approval in 1952 of a planning request to extract fluorspar from rakes (wide seams of fluorspar) should […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dpfr.org.uk\/wp_dpfr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}