Minerals

We act for a broad range of businesses including building material suppliers, contractors, manufacturers, and mineral extraction and mining companies.

Our specialist team advises on planning and environmental issues arising from mining projects and developments including major planning inquiries, advising on minerals leases, property transactions including complex royalty, planning and supply arrangements and the corporate, competition, property and banking aspects of acquisitions.

We have extensive experience in dealing with minerals sites, from the promotion of the site through the planning process and also waste permitting and exemptions, restoration and redevelopment.

We are an associate member of the Mineral Products Association and regularly provide training to other members on new legislation, compliance, health and safety and regulatory issues.

Highlights

• Aggregate company on approach to addressing the new greenbelt ‘openness assessment’ requirement arising from the March 2018 Court of Appeal decision (Samuel Smith Old Brewery (Tadcaster) Oxton Farm v North Yorkshire County Council & Anor [2018] EWCA Civ 489). This was the first openness assessment to be submitted. We assisted in scoping its requirements and settling the final version.
• Quarrying company in dispute with the (surface) owner of land. Our client owned the minerals within the land and was in dispute over the extent of the rights of entry that went with those lands, which our client needed to exercise in order to obtain planning permission to commence excavation. Proceedings were commenced for an injunction to enforce the rights. The surface owner initially obtained summary judgment but this was set aside on appeal with the appeal judge preferring our client’s arguments on interpretation of the rights.
• Membership body in relation to the insourcing of its company secretarial function and the restructuring of its administration function. This involved consideration of the application of TUPE and also the nature of the services being provided and whether contractual performance measures were being satisfied.