We need your help!

WE NEED YOUR HELP! As you know, local residents are fighting hard to oppose the planning application to quarry stone from the Canyons. We are putting together photos and evidence of how the area is loved and used by people. It would really help us with our evidence if you would please complete the quick survey below. Thank you!

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/VRHSTHR

We also need donations!  To make our strongest case at the Public Inquiry in January 2019 we need some professional assistance - this includes help towards fees for expert advice, representation and the general costs of preparing our case.  Until now this has all come from volunteers giving from their own pockets.  

We are determined to stand up for our Communities  but need some help from our friends. 

  Any contribution will make a difference. If you love the Canyons and want to save them from destruction and 20 years or quarrying, please consider giving something via our secure Go Fund Me page:

https://www.gofundme.com/save-blaencuffin-canyons 

Or if you would prefer, you could send a cheque payable to "Anti Quarry Coalition" to c/o Lyn Maloney, 14, Pleasant View, Llanhilleth, Abertillery, NP13 2RS.

Thank you for supporting us to continue our fight.

Rights of Way - getting them onto the definitive map

Recently the owner of the Canyon has tried to prevent people visiting the "blue lagoon", by sending a digger in to tear up the tarmac path and trees near the entrance to make it difficult to get in.

Barbed wire is also often added to the top of the stile.

The Canyon was common land before the opencast in the 60s, so in 1964 when the opencast finished it should have been retuned to common land, so all could roam in there once more.

The powers that be let the community down and didn't legally make this happen, but locals have used it like common land, for many activities including walking and enjoying the unique features of the Canyons like the blue lagoon and amazing cliff faces.

The owners of the Canyon trying to stop us visiting the lake is unacceptable.

So we need to get the authorities to do what they should have done in the 60s, and make this ground open access.

One of the ways we can do this is to collect evidence that people have been going down to the blue lagoon for more than 20 years. This is how we make the path people have taken since the 60s official by getting it on the "Definitive map"

For this we need to contact people who have walked this route and get them to fill in evidence forms.

Public Right of way evidence form in PDF

Public Rights of Way evidence form MS Word doc

We URGENTLY need your help again to save the Canyon !

The developers have appealed Torfaen's decision to turn the application down, so it is going to the Planning Inspectorate,
who need all your comments in by 28th March 2018.

Please join our facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1389771621051189/

Please share this on the internet with your friends, neighbours and colleagues

Please print this off for those who need help with internet access or would prefer to write

Even if you have written before to object, please object again by either:

1)  going to https://acp.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/ViewCase.aspx?CaseID=3187180&CoID=0 and clicking on
"Make Representation", or

2)  emailing wales@pins.gsi.gov.uk quoting reference  Case APP/V6945/A/17/3187180
and cc in stopthequarry@illtyd.co.uk, or

3)  writing to Wales Assembly Government, Planning Inspectorate, Cathays Park, Cardiff, CF10 3NQ
quoting reference  Case APP/V6945/A/17/3187180

You must include your name and address etc for comments to be valid.  If you have photos of you enjoying the
canyon, send them one. Responses need to be in your own words, but the sort of things you could include are:

• The site is valuable for many species of wildlife including 13 Schedule One birds that use the area.

• The woodland where the proposed new road will go is valuable ancient woodland with many important species including several types of bat

• 100 lorries a day on the proposed new access road across the common - increased risk of flooding to nearby properties, and interference to public amenity of those using the common

• the canyons are now much more widely used and known about because of the publicity around the planning application (send photos and examples)

• the developers said there was no public access to the land at the planning meeting. This is not true.  The canyon is well used by walkers and cyclists, and the areas of common immediately surrounding the canyon (including the road and the common) are used by walkers, cyclists, horseriders, people flying model planes and kites and playing golf.  All these will be endangered by the lorry movements.

• Peakman claim this is a "restoration" project taking "secondary aggregates" which will improve the canyon and its environment and they are using rules for developing old industrial sites which have recently closed, rather than a site which nature has reclaimed over the last 50+ years.

• unacceptable noise, light and dust pollution to local residents and neighbouring communities such as Brynithel, Llanhilleth and Pantagasseg

• significant additional HGV movements and associated pollution on the already congested and heavily polluted roads through Hafodyrynys and Crumlin

• the canyons are part of our industrial heritage and should be protected and linked with nearby Blaenavon World Heritage Site

• the benefit of 12 jobs does not outweigh all the bad consequences of this development

• there is no longer a requirement for Torfaen to produce a certain amount of aggregate

• is there a shortage of this sort of stone? No, so opening up this quarry will simply mean jobs are lost elsewhere - so no job gain

• the site should be preserved for the enjoyment of future generations