Corylus was the principal consultancy undertaking a comprehensive Landscape and Visual Impact Assessment (LVIA) and formulating a detailed and complex working and restoration scheme within a very sensitive site.

Our challenge was to look at securing a proposed major extension to an existing quarry on a 22- hectare coniferous woodland site, just north of the New Forest National Park, near Whiteparish in Wiltshire.

The proposed extension scheme involved the extraction of 1.34 million tonnes of soft sand over a nine- year period. This also involved the progressive backfilling of the resultant extraction voids with imported inert materials and the restoration of the site to broadleaf woodland and agricultural land. Much of the site was designated as ancient woodland and contained a number of protected species, including Great Crested Newts, Dormice and reptiles.

Under our recommendation, the phased working and restoration scheme involved the careful stripping and preservation of ancient woodland soils and the planned translocation of protected species. All of our team’s expert consultancy throughout the project resulted in planning permission being granted. The final restoration scheme re-established native broadleaf woodland over the majority of the site with the provision of extended and enhanced habitats for protected species and the management of a diversity of woodland habitats into the future.

In recognition of the carefully designed scheme of working and restoration at Brickworth Quarry, the site operators Raymond Brown Minerals & Recycling were rewarded as winners of the ‘Biodiversity - Planned Restoration’ category of the Mineral Products Association (MPA) Quarries & Nature.