Briggens Estate

Welcome to Briggens Estate

On Friday 22 July 2022 Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) launched its public consultation on its draft Mineral and Waste Local Plan (MWLP). The new draft plan replaces the draft Minerals Plan and draft Waste Local Plan that were both withdrawn by Hertfordshire County Council in December 2021.

For mineral planning, one of the purposes of the MWLP is to identify and allocate suitable sites for future mineral extraction, that will help Hertfordshire meet its share of the region’s requirements for construction materials up to 2041 and beyond.

Tarmac is proposing part of the Briggens Estate (Olives Farm) as a suitable site for sand and gravel extraction within the emerging MWLP. The Briggens Estate is an area of land to the east of Stanstead Abbotts. (see map here).

As part of the previous draft Mineral Plan process, we undertook several preliminary investigations and studies to gather information on the suitability of the site to be included in the plan. This information is still relevant and has formed the basis for the “Preferred Site” status for the Briggens Estate under the draft MWLP.

The consultation will run until midnight on Monday 31’st October 2022. You can read the draft proposals and give your feedback by clicking here. HCC will then consider these representations and prepare a further draft MWLP for consultation early mid-2023. Adoption of the plan is not anticipated until 2024.

If the site is confirmed by HCC as being allocated in the adopted MWLP, we will still need to prepare and submit a full planning application, which we currently don’t intend to do for a number of years. However, we are a responsible operator that wants to build strong relationships with the communities in which we operate – now, or potentially in the future – so any future proposals would be subject to a full and thorough public consultation.

We recognise that residents want to know more about what is going on and have created this website to provide as much information as we can at this stage in the process. You can read more about our proposals on the ‘About’ page and on our FAQs. All representations submitted to date can be downloaded here.