Do we live in a world where for some people money really is the only thing that matters, where damage to a small wood used by generations of local people can be dismissed solely on the grounds that 'it's business'?
Why are we opposing it? Because as you can see the yard is in the middle of a small but important wood for local people. All of the light green coloured trees surrounding the back of the yard have now been ripped out. What SMC has done is logged two of the three acres of remaining woodland and started infilling this area with building waste and waste from their ready mixed concrete business .
Over fifty years ago my grandfather founded a civil engineering company in Shawbury. The yard area was woodland when he bought it and my family over the years enlarged this yard to five acres, so yes my family are responsible for the fact that the yard is here at all, which is what Shropshire Mini Mix (which bought the yard 18 months ago off Ennstones) are using as a stick to beat us with because we're opposing their intention to double its size.
Why are we opposing it? Because as you can see the yard is in the middle of a small but important wood for local people. All of the light green coloured trees surrounding the back of the yard have now been ripped out. What SMC has done is logged two of the three acres of remaining woodland and started infilling this area with building waste and waste from their ready mixed concrete business .
The reason? They haven't given one. Their planning application doesn't give a reason, but the land is more valuable if they can change the use from woodland to commercial. Its also a handy place to dump their waste concrete - no tip fees. After all they don't need the space, they've sold all of the existing land which has planning permission for commercial use except the small section they operate from.
The problem is that there is a Forestry Commission path right behind this yard. The result - w
ell, for the last twelve months if you went for a nice walk through the wood, right in the middle you would have come face to face not with mature trees, which were there before, but with this. There is now a three foot tall, one foot wide soil bund against this fence, which is farcical as a screen. Soon I expect this area will be forever covered in concrete.
The problem is that there is a Forestry Commission path right behind this yard. The result - w
ell, for the last twelve months if you went for a nice walk through the wood, right in the middle you would have come face to face not with mature trees, which were there before, but with this. There is now a three foot tall, one foot wide soil bund against this fence, which is farcical as a screen. Soon I expect this area will be forever covered in concrete.And why's it taken twelve months for the bund to be erected? Because whilst the Council might be pretty hot on modifications to private houses, it took this long for them to even ask SMC to apply for 'retrospective' planning permission.
What is so wrong with this? Firstly because we have a council that proclaims its target for North Shropshire is 'no net loss of trees', states that ' the size and intensity of the proposal must not have an unacceptable impact on the surrounding area and its immediate setting', and yet has effectively given this company a free hand to do what it liked for twelve months, including allowing them to continue infilling for months without applying for planning permission. This doesn't give us a lot of hope that they are not going to allow three acres of woodland to be forever obliterated for no reason at all.
Secondly, because if they allow a company to convert woodland whilst giving no reason for it they are sending a signal to everyone who buys woodland that as long as you rip the trees out and describe it as 'wasteland' you can concrete over it and the Council's happy (higher rateable value), the company's happy, and if the local people who depend on the surrounding woodland to get away from the stresses of everyday life don't like it, they can drive elsewhere - if they have a car.
SMC was so keen to remove the woodland they smashed a section of it down by swinging the arm of an excavator at them like a scythe last June,when birds could have been nesting in them, (either the timber contractor wasn't working fast enough or they just thought it'd be fun to rip them out like this). Now, the path behind this yard is almost deserted, the sound of heavy machinery and concrete silos penetrates even more deeply into the wood, and if SMC gets their way, the yard will get even bigger!
But, as SMC say, its business.
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