As the County Councillor for Chaddesley, Marcus Hart attended and spoke at the Lea Castle 2nd Planning Inquiry on behalf of his residents.  His address to the Inquiry is as follows:

I am Councillor Marcus Hart. I serve on Wolverley and Cookley Parish Council and  have done so since 2015. I also represent Wolverley and Cookley on Wyre Forest District Council having done so since 2015, and I also serve on Worcestershire
County Council, and currently represent Chaddesley Division, which is in close proximity to this site, since 2017.

I speak on behalf of the Chaddesley Division residents that I represent too.

There are many, many arguments which have been articulated in this inquiry, either at the planning application stage before Worcestershire County Council, when this matter was rejected a couple of years ago and indeed at the original planning inquiry at the Stone Manor and they are multi-faceted in terms of highways objections, noise, dust, pollution.

However, I think the strongest argument that I made to Worcestershire County Council’s Planning Committee when I urged them to reject the application and indeed, the point I I made at the previous inquiry and I'll repeat it profoundly and
most robustly on this occasion is the overwhelming and adverse effect on the green belt and the openness of the countryside that this will have.

Wyre Forest District Council in April 2022 quite properly approved, a Local Plan, which at the time wasn't without controversy, because of course, greenbelt land was released for residential development.

Lea Castle village is very, very close to the proposed quarry site and is going to have 1400 dwellings on it over the course of the next 5 to 10 years, there are already currently 300 - 400 houses built with children and families residing in a beautiful area of the Parish. Many of those had absolutely no idea they were potentially going to be faced with a quarry on land just adjacent to them.

I believe that the local plan, as is currently adopted, safeguards greenbelt land, the land where this quarry is proposed is a buffer between the village of Wolverley, the village of Cookley and the new master-planned Lea Castle Village and I firmly believe any proposal for any type of development will have such a profound effect on the openness of the countryside, not just the 10 years, but for many, many years and decades to come.

I believe that it is right, of course, that we should have quarries and it's right we should have new houses, but they need to be in the right locations and as our MP has articulated this proposed site is far far too close to residential properties, the 5 schools and a whole host of other local services. The proposal, as is now, for the reduced size of plant and equipment and reduced bunds, in my judgement does not reduce in any way the profound effect this area will have on the greenbelt. There are several thousand residents within Wolverley, Cookley and Lea Castle Village who live in this area because it is in the countryside and they cherish the greenbelt, cherish the public open space and at a time when there is great demand on our greenbelt, quite properly for housing but again needing to be in the right locations and right areas it is even more essential in this location given the size of the Lea Castle Village and other residential developments east of Kidderminster that we preserve the greenbelt that we have and I firmly believe if this quarry is allowed to go ahead that cumulative impact is so adverse, that it would in my argument, to this inquiry, outweigh any benefits from an economic or social value that it would bring and I would strongly argue that this quarry should not be allowed and that we should continue to robustly defend the very, very beautiful greenbelt we have.