Quarry body critical of CPRE's scaremongering

The Quarry Products Assoc-iation (QPA) has hit back at the Campaign to Protect Rural England's (CPRE) accusations that the industry is about to excavate an area the size of Birmingham.
"Yet again the CPRE has resorted to using the same misleading and inaccurate miscalculations about future aggregates demand that it trots out every few years," said Simon van der Byl, director general of the QPA.
"In the past, it has run campaigns based upon holes the size of Manchester, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and the Isle of Wight and on every occasion these claims have proved to have been grossly superficial and exaggerated."
Van der Byl added: "It is typical of the CPRE's distorted vision that it attacks quarries as 'holes'. Perhaps if its superficial research dug a little deeper, it would see that quarries mean homes, schools, hospitals and much more, and it would recognise that Britain's quarrying companies have some of the best environmental records in the world."
CPRE's report, Extracting the Truth about Quarrying, claimed future demand would require 125 million trucks, while QPA said industry uses between 12 and 15,000 trucks.