CLAY company Sibelco has raised serious concerns over a £25 million development to create a mini new town on the western edge of Newton Abbot.

Known as Houghton Barton, the area is earmarked for a sustainable development of 1,800 new homes, a school, employment land, community centre and green space as well as a new road linking the A382 with the A383.

But the development plan location includes areas of land over which there are mineral rights.

Newton Abbot and the Bovey Basin are recognised as important for their rich reserves of ball clay and the rights give the landowner the right to exploit or mine minerals lying below the surface.

There is already an operational quarry, Ringslade, to the east of the site and a minerals safeguarding area. 

As a non-renewable resource, minerals safeguarding is the process of ensuring that non-minerals development does not needlessly prevent the future extraction of mineral resources, of local and national importance.

Sibelco say using the land for employment will mean it is unable to access the ball clay beneath.

The Houghton Barton development framework, known as NA1, went before Teignbridge Council’s planning committee who were informed lawyers for Sibelco, which owns some of the mineral rights in the area, had written to the authority raising a number of concerns.

Teignbridge Council officer Fergus Pate told members: ‘Minerals are a significant issue and this was recognised in preparing the local plan.

‘Mineral rights are controlled by Sibelco and are looking to be viable for ball clay extraction in the future.’

He pointed out that Forches Cross is considered to be an important location for ball clay.

This area is the one of main concern currently to Sibelco and is within a minerals safeguarding area.

However, mineral rights extend further across the NA1 site.

Potential ball clay has also been identified beneath land identified for employment use.

Mr Pate said: ‘Employment development could come forward in the interim and the two can coexist on a plan if not in time.’

Sibelco, he explained, had raised two key issues, one being the use of the land as employment land could sterilise the ball clay.

Employment land has already been approved in principal through the local plan until such time as the land is quarried.

The application site cuts across a huge area and stretches from Forches Cross on the A382 Bovey Tracey Road westwards towards the Seale Hayne campus and then south to the former Hele Park Golf Course on the A383 Ashburton Road, where 650 homes are currently being built.

Devon County Council has already had to delay plans to widen and realign the A383 as it lies within the mineral safeguarding area identified in the Devon Minerals Plan.

The £13 million scheme may now have to go to a judicial review unless the parties can reach agreement by the end of this month.

Cllr Jackie Brodie asked: ‘The site shows some areas where there are mineral rights that are safeguarded, but are we talking about putting a link road in a minerals zone which is going to be on top of ball clay deposits?’

Cllr Mike Pilkington then asked: ‘In the event of businesses having to be moved or the road having to be moved for mineral rights, who pays for it?

‘And is there a chance if you buy a house, someone could come along and want to dig up ball clay?’

Mr Page admitted there was a risk and that it would be ‘sorted out’ but it is not known exactly how.

Meanwhile Cllr Brodie appealed to officers not to make the same mistakes at Hele Park which she described as a ‘catalogue of errors.’

She said: ‘We’ve got pavements not linked, no allotments coming forward, the road not being adopted, a close being called a close when it is a through road, roundabouts in use that shouldn’t be.

‘We must not repeat the same errors, it won’t be a sustainable community unless we get this right.

‘We should support this as a good job but we have got to get this to work as if it doesn’t it will be a disastrous suburb for Newton Abbot.’

After the meeting, Sibelco issued a statement saying: ‘We welcome the joined-up thinking and coordinated infrastructure delivery that masterplanning can achieve and will continue to make ourselves available for dialogue as the process continues.

‘We must take the view however that significant mineral sterilisation has to be resisted and would urge planning authorities here and elsewhere to seek the most appropriate use of land that has been identified for strategic growth.’