A PLANNING application has finally been submitted to resume working of the Alton Road sandpit, nine months after news that a new company had taken over the lease and wanted to recommence sand extraction and landfilling.

Wiltshire-based Earthline Ltd was halted in its tracks last spring by Surrey County Council, which issued a sharp warning that the company could not simply begin working the 36 hectare (100 acre) site under a planning consent granted more than a decade previously.

Planning permission was granted on September 13, 2002, for the extraction of 770,000 tonnes of sand and 512,000 cubic metres of clay and infilling with non-hazardous industrial, commercial, household and inert waste.

However, very little extraction has taken place there since the 1990s, and conditions attached to the 2002 consent laid down that restoration of the site should be completed over a period of 11-and-a-half years.

For full story, see this week's Farnham Herald.