home - committee - volume - faq's - help -search - meeting - previous - next

V25-422 : APPLICATION FOR LICENCE FOR MARINE DREDGING EAST OF SOUTHWOLD

At minute V23 - 505/20, members were advised of the concerns expressed by the Eastern Sea Fisheries Joint Council (ESFJC) over an application to extract marine aggregates from an area 16 miles offshore of Southwold.

Members requested the Director of Community Services to seek copies of the ESFJC and Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) responses to the dredging application from the Department of the Environment (DoE). The DoE administered the Government View Procedure for dredging licence applications. These responses had now been obtained.

ESFJC disputed the fishing details contained in the Environmental Statement produced on behalf of the dredging applicant. They considered that conclusions had been drawn from inadequate data and that statistics available for a large area should not be used in making conclusions relating to a small area. They claimed that this inevitably led to significant errors and they felt that the study to determine commercial fishing activities was inadequate. ESFJC disputed the Statement's conclusion that, at worst, fish landings of the inshore fleet would be reduced by 1%. They called for the Government View to be deferred until the Environmental Statement's deficiencies were addressed.

MAFF concluded that they could not support the application unless a number of conditions were set. These included:

(a) applicants to surrender existing licensed areas in the vicinity of the application area;

(b) dredging to be initially restricted to the eastern zone. Dredging to move to western zone only if MAFF was satisfied that fishermen's concerns were safeguarded. The western zone was regarded as the more productive part of the application area;

(c) licence to be limited to 5 years.

The Director of Community Services could not comment on specific issues relating to fisheries interests. However, from reviewing the responses received by DoE from MAFF and ESFJC, it appeared that the conditions recommended by MAFF to be applied to any licence, took into account the concerns of local fishermen.

Members were generally very unhappy at the prospect of any dredging taking place whilst there was any possibility of detriment to the offshore fisheries, and wished their concerns to be passed on to the DoE.

RESOLVED

That the Council express objection to the Department of the Environment concerning proposed marine aggregate extraction 16 miles offshore of Southwold due to potential detriment to offshore fisheries.

Volume 25 Minute 422

powered by Oultwood Web Technology

© Waveney District Council