Councillor Andy Carr

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Councillor Andy Carr Local independant Portland Town Councillor, trying to make a difference .

Does anyone know why we are cutting a field of wild flowers in May.
21/05/2026

Does anyone know why we are cutting a field of wild flowers in May.

Landfills on Portland On Wednesday the 18th March, at the Portland Town Council meeting, we will be having a discussion ...
16/03/2026

Landfills on Portland
On Wednesday the 18th March, at the Portland Town Council meeting, we will be having a discussion about Landfills on Portland. Why is Portland one of the biggest landfill site areas in England?.... Admiralty 600,000 tons, Broadcroft 1,000,000 tons Coombefield 1,000,000
If you live on or near a Landfill come along and give your opinion.

Hi, Back on the planned Southwell Quarry / Mine entrance ; I have created some AI images to help visualise the size of ...
15/02/2026

Hi, Back on the planned Southwell Quarry / Mine entrance ; I have created some AI images to help visualise the size of the excavation that will remove 220,000 tons of soil and cap stone to expose the expected 102,000 tons Portland stone, and the congestion the initial 24,000 HGV journeys will cause in Southwell.
The planning request P/FUL/2024/05804 is closed at the moment , but if you email Planning Minerals with the the planning reference and your name and address you can give your opinion on this planning request.

20/01/2026

If we don't stop the new quarry, you will see it from this beautiful site on the other side of the road going towards Southwell from Portland Bill.
Portland is the most quarried place in Britain, you have to wonder how much of our history has been thrown on the spoil heap.

18/01/2026

Hi I am still focused on the new quarry/mine entrance planned for the Bill Road P/FUL/2024/05804
So yesterday, to help visualise the potential pollution and disruption caused with creating the new quarry, I filmed the route the 12,000 full HGV's will take between the Bill Road and Combefield quarry. Obviously, 12,000 empty HGV's will return on the same route . The plan is 4 loads per hour so 8 HGV's every hour everyday, month after month.

21/12/2025

Hi, Hope you are well and enjoying the holidays.

On Wednesday, I resigned from the Planning committee of Portland Town Council. I did not accept this as an accurate reflection of the discussion on the 27th of November and I was ashamed to be associated with the following statement from PTC.
https://portlandtowncouncil.gov.uk/application/files/1317/6605/4403/Merged_251217_Planning_Highways_Agenda.pdf

P/FUL/2024/05804 Planning application to develop a mine entrance in Phase 4 of the Coastal Strip to mine Portland Stone and for the use of part of Coombefield Quarry North for the temporary storage of soils and overburden

Portland Town Council supports this application for the following reasons:
• The mining of the coastal strip will be far less intrusive than quarrying, including less visual impact on the landscape less impact on biodiversity
• Once the mine opening has been created, there will be far less impact on the highways than there would be if quarried under the 1951 consents

No mention of the discussion that Phase 4 is a quarry and will be so for many years, or the 220,000 tons of soil and stone to be removed. The 24,000 HGV journeys though Southwell to create the quarry. Just the threat to use the 1952 planning consent to open quarry the whole strip.

There is something of an acceptance from Portlanders.
They accept the destruction of their island, their future, their home by quarry owners as acceptable, unavoidable. The response is often “what can you do?, it happens”

There appears to be nowhere else in Dorset or even England where people would just accept the destruction of a community asset, an irreplicable landscape, an area of scientific interest, and area of outstanding natural beauty that is used and visited by 100,000’s of people.

Have a good Christmas / New Year

• "I am changing the things I cannot accept." - Angela Davis

The planning consent that changed Portland. The “1951 Planning Consent Minerals “ enabled the unconstrained quarrying of...
14/12/2025

The planning consent that changed Portland.
The “1951 Planning Consent Minerals “ enabled the unconstrained quarrying of 324 hectares of the remaining grassland on Portland.

I have mixed feelings about the 1951 planning consent. It was passed , with many others, by our greatest generation; people who survived the 2nd world war and wanted to make the UK a better place. They gave us the NHS, built millions of homes that allowed millions to escape slums, built hospitals, schools and much of the infrastructure and utilities we depend on now.

In the case of Portland it was not used to rebuild the country, Portland Stone has always been a luxury product. It is used to build palaces, banks, corporate and government headquarters. No housing estates, hospitals, schools, roads were built from Portland stone in post war Britain.
The original landscape of Portland in the North and central part of the island was destroyed by quarrying in the late 19th century, and later, the 1951 planning consent facilitated the replacement of the grassland in the south of the island with quarries.

Portland is the most quarried place in the UK, one third of the present land is visible quarries. If you include the old quarries that have been filled and built on or abandoned most of the island has been quarried for stone to make buildings most of us are not allowed to enter.

And now 75 years later, the 1951 consent is being used to quarry the last remnants of Portland’s original landscape.The strip of land between Southwell and Portland Bill is to be industrialised with a new quarry, which will eventually become a mine that will be active for 40-60 years.
The immediate impact of this new quarry will be the removal of 220,000 tons of soil and cap stone, requiring 24,000 HGV journeys on the bill road and through the congested streets of Southwell. The long-term impact is the industrialisation of the last part of old Portland for generations to come.

There is some hope in my depressing missive, in that the 1951 Consent is subject to some restrain in the Review of Old Mineral Permissions (ROMP)process which was brought in under later environmental regulation.
Also mining processes and technology has changed dramatically since 1951. The future for Portland stone is extraction by mining https://www.albionstone.com

Phase 1 and 2 of the proposed Coastal Strip or ‘Southwell quarry ‘ are within a hundred meters of the existing huge ‘Coombefield quarry’.

My request to you is contact your councillors and request a ROMP of the 1951 Planning Consent minerals for the Coastal strip and specifically the lates planning applications P/FUL/2024/05804 and P/FUL/2024/05814. Asking for the coastal strip to be preserved and mined from existing quarries.

https://portlandtowncouncil.gov.uk/council/councillors
https://moderngov.dorsetcouncil.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1
and our MP [email protected]

Quarrying has transformed Portland into a patchwork of industrial scars, reclaimed nature reserves, and cultural landsca...
08/12/2025

Quarrying has transformed Portland into a patchwork of industrial scars, reclaimed nature reserves, and cultural landscapes. Roughly a third of the island’s landmass is quarries or ex-quarries, making Portland one of the most visibly quarried places in Britain.
Some people want to add more scars.
Some people want to save the little untouched land that is left.
Some are too weary and demoralised to act.

Portland Stone Firms say they need the stone under the Coastal Strip for the company’s long-term survival.
My view is that the future recovery of Portland stone should be done by mining from EXISTING quarries. Portland does not need another quarry.

I have been told that mining from other quarries is impossible. I looked at examples of recent tunnelling in England that was unplanned, but eventually found to be possible, and came across HS2 and the HS2 tunnels.

After protests from local people over 100km of HS2 will now run through tunnels…..11 tunnels between London and Birmingham, with the main purpose of minimizing environmental and visual impact.

The key parts of this to me are that the change to tunnelling was done to “minimise environmental and visual impact”

These tunnels were created or extended because local people protested, they did not accept the destruction of their environment and beautiful landscapes.
Working with their local councils, other likeminded groups and their MP’s they persuaded the government and HS2 ltd to tunnel and save fragile irreplaceable landscapes.
The trains will run, but landscapes were saved.

The stone in the coastal strip could be recovered from existing quarries, and a precious landscape could be saved.

We just need the will to save it.

01/12/2025

Southwell HGV traffic

I’ve been asked where I got the numbers on HGV journeys, also the amounts of soil, overburden and cap stone being removed to create the new quarry.

The information was in various documents in amongst the many, many, docs attached to P-FUL-2024-50804, so they were available for anyone to read…….and they made interesting reading.

The best document on the tonnage to be removed and HGV journeys is the one attached.

The top table is the tonnages of soil to be removed :-

The new Southwell Quarry (mine entrance) is Phase 4
161,100 tonnes of overburden
60,803 tonnes of cap stone

12,329 full HGV loads
12,329 empty HGV journeys

The second table shows the expected amount of Portland stone to be removed from each phase.
In phase 4 ,it is planned that 102,740 tonnes, quarried at a rate of 8,000 tonnes per year will be removed . It might take 13 years before the mining of phase 3 and 5 starts. Once started ,
14.49 years and then
12.5 years of production at a consistent 8,000 tons per year.
is 40 years of industrial heavy engineering on the Bill and HGVs travelling through Southwell.

This is a generational change to Portland. Generations of Portlanders and visitors will drive over the hill from Southwell and see a giant hole in the ground housing heavy engineering accessed by HGVs.

30/11/2025

Update from Councillor Andy Carr on the extraordinary Planning meeting held on Thur 27th of Nov to discuss the new quarry to be opened on the Bill Road.
Planning application P/FUL/2024/05804 describes the new quarry as a mine entrance.

I would rather be clear and open with the residents, and as the old Portland saying goes.….If it walks like a quarry, swims like a quarry, quacks like a quarry and involves digging a huge hole in the ground to remove Portland stone, IT IS A Quarry.

The Portland Town Council planning committee voted in favour of the application; I voted against as I believe we don’t need any more quarries on Portland (we have loads) and the remaining Portland Stone that is underground should be removed by mining from the existing quarries on the island.

We definitely don’t need a new quarry on the Bill, arguably one of the prettiest parts of the island and the biggest tourist attraction.

Very few members of the public attended the meeting, partly due to the weather and the old ‘call it a mine entrance‘ trick, but one brave member of the public from Southwell did raise the important question on traffic congestion in Southwell. This was addressed by the HGV’s having radios and not running during the school holidays.

To create the new quarry 161,100 Tons of soil and overburden plus 60,000 Tons of cap stone will have to be removed by HGV’s and dumped in Coombefield quarry (ironically Coombefield has a mine but is still called a quarry)

For those of you reaching for a calculator I will save you time. Each HGV can carry 18 tons so this equates 12,000 HGV loads from the new quarry through Southwell to the dumping area and 12,000 empty HGV journeys returning. 24,000 HGV journeys on the Bill road and through Southwell.

I have been through all the documents in this application and what is appalling is there is no input from Dorset Council Highways Dept on the safety or practicality of this huge number of HGV journeys on congested B roads and through a historic village where people are forced to park on the road and where visibility is restricted in several places.

My request to you

Is go to the Dorset Planning Portal, look up application P/FUL/2024/05804 and ask about the safety and mitigation plan for huge volume of HGV traffic

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