Ennstone Johnston

In February 2008 Norfolk County Council published ‘Mineral Site Allocations: Issues and Options’. This document lists 104 possible mineral extraction sites, including MIN 97 (Bintree Woods), MIN 103 (the farmland between the woods and Bintree village) and MIN 106 (farmland between Bintree Woods and Billingford). The applications to extract sand and gravel from 103 and 106 were submitted by Ennstone Johnson Ltd on behalf of the local landowners. The applications for MIN 103 and MIN 106 were withdrawn in December 2008. Ennstone have also been chosen by the Forestry Commission to dig up Bintree Woods.

Ennstone Johnston is an operating company of Ennstone plc, a multinational company supplying products to the building industry. There are a number of reasons why we should do everything we can to keep this company away from our woods and countryside.

• In February 2004 Ennstone was fined for causing damage to an internationally important wildlife site in Cornwall which resulted in damage to a large area of riverbank and pollution of a river. Click here to see English Nature press release.
• On 31 October 2007 Ennstone wrote to Norfolk County Council, in connection with its application to quarry the farmland near Billingford (MIN 106), that after ten years of extraction it would restore the site and ‘improve and expand the adjacent Bintree Woods’. However, only three weeks later they were appointed the contractors to dig up these same Bintree Woods over a fifty-year period.
• More recently, in a letter to the Forestry Commission, Ennstone suggested that it would be best to let the ‘dust settle’ before it undertook further investigations into the mineral potential in Bintree Woods. Presumably they hope local opposition wiil fade away

Clearly this is not a company that can be trusted to treat the natural environment with respect or to be straightforward in its dealings with the local community.