I urge everyone reading this blog to get behind the campaign to Protect Wicklesham Quarry – and to do so as urgently as possible by supporting the Crowdjustice Appeal launched today.

I get asked to support a lot of local campaigns to protect areas of special environmental significance. Unfortunately, I can only help a few, just because of time pressures. But when Anna Hoare (the coordinator of the local campaign) asked me to look into the Wicklesham Quarry case, I felt I absolutely had to do whatever I could.

Wicklesham Quarry is indeed one of those special places – from an environmental, earth science and landscape perspective. It’s a Site of Special Scientific Interest, part of West Oxfordshire Heights Conservation Target Area, and ‘one of Britain’s richest palaeontological sites’. Having been used as a quarry for many years, its developer (Grundon Limited) is required by Oxfordshire County Council to restore the site, a conservation priority recognised in the local authority’s (Vale of White Horse District Council) Local Plan.

But the owners of the land have other ideas: to convert Wicklesham Quarry into a 20-acre industrial warehousing site. And they have succeeded in influencing Faringdon Neighbourhood Plan in order to include their proposal. An ‘independent’ Examiner upheld that decision a few weeks ago.

This is just so WRONG! Such an outrageous ABUSE of the planning system!

Faringdon doesn’t actually need to allocate any more land for employment use. It already has enough to last until 2031. But we all need places like Wicklesham Quarry properly protected, with the relevant laws properly upheld.

This completely disgraceful process can still be stopped – through a Judicial Review. A minimum of £10,000 has to be raised by October 25th. I’ll be making my donation today, and I urge anyone else who can to lend their support to it too.

  • Crowdjustice Appeal: https://www.crowdjustice.co.uk/case/sssi-and-conservationtarget-area/
  • Campaign Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Protect-Wicklesham-Quarry-from-Development-527756767390043
  • Campaign petition: https://www.change.org/p/faringdon-town-council-the-vale-of-white-horse-district-council-and-secretary-of-state-greg-clark-protect-wicklesham-quarry-from-development