Appealing a refusal by a minerals and waste authority

An appeal against refusal of a minerals or waste application follows the same statutory route as any other, under section 78 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, and is determined by the Planning Inspectorate. What differs is everything around it. A minerals waste appeal is decided against a minerals and waste local plan prepared by a different authority from the district, with its own policy framework, its own evidence on need and capacity, and a set of restoration and aftercare controls that no housing appeal ever engages.

The procedural route is familiar. The case you have to build is not.

What makes an application a county matter

County matters are defined in Schedule 1 to the 1990 Act, and in a two-tier area they are determined by the county council as minerals and waste planning authority rather than by the district. In a unitary authority, a London borough or a National Park the same body does both jobs, which removes the jurisdictional question but not the policy one.

The categories cover the winning and working of minerals, the use of land for mineral-working deposits, operations and uses ancillary to mineral working, the search for and extraction of minerals, waste development including disposal and recovery operations, and the erection of buildings, plant and machinery for those purposes.

Two practical checks are worth making before anything else. First, confirm which authority should have determined the application, because an application decided by the wrong authority is vulnerable and an appeal against such a decision starts from a bad place. Second, check whether any part of the proposal is a district matter, because mixed schemes sometimes need two applications and the appeal only reaches the one that was refused.

Who determines and who hears the appeal

The appeal goes to the Secretary of State and is decided by an inspector in the ordinary way, or by the Secretary of State where the appeal has been recovered for their own decision. The Inspectorate chooses between written representations, a hearing and an inquiry by reference to the issues rather than to the appellant's preference, and larger minerals and waste cases usually attract an inquiry.

The refusing authority defends the appeal, and on county matters that means a county planning team that may be smaller and more specialised than a district development management service. Expect a well-informed opposing case on the technical policy and a thinner one on general planning balance.

District councils and parish councils in the area will often appear as interested parties, and well-organised local groups frequently obtain Rule 6 status at inquiry, so the dynamics of taking part in someone else's appeal are worth understanding from your side of the table.

Policy framework for minerals and waste appeals

The development plan for a county matter application is not the district local plan alone. It includes the adopted minerals and waste local plan, the relevant district local plan where its policies apply, any neighbourhood plan covering the site, and in London the spatial development strategy. Section 38(6) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 applies to the whole of it.

National policy splits. The National Planning Policy Framework carries the minerals policies, including the expectation that mineral planning authorities maintain landbanks of permitted reserves, conventionally expressed as at least seven years for sand and gravel and at least ten years for crushed rock. Waste policy sits in the separate National Planning Policy for Waste rather than in the Framework, which is a distinction appellants miss and inspectors do not.

Cite the current edition of the Framework by its policy reference and state the edition, because it was restructured on 17 August 2026 and older paragraph numbers no longer correspond. Verify the reference on gov.uk at the point of writing the statement of case.

Three further policy layers matter on individual sites. Mineral safeguarding areas and consultation areas, which bite on other people's development as much as on yours. The waste hierarchy duty under the waste regulations, which an inspector will expect the proposal to be positioned against. And the local aggregate assessment, which is the authority's own published evidence on supply.

Evidence on need and capacity

This is where minerals and waste appeals are won. Unlike a housing appeal, the need case is usually quantified and the authority's own documents provide the baseline.

For aggregates, the local aggregate assessment sets out sales, reserves and the landbank position, and the managed aggregate supply system allocates apportionments through the aggregate working parties. An appeal case built on the authority's own published figures, showing a landbank below the national expectation for that mineral, is far stronger than one asserting general demand.

For waste, the waste local plan identifies a capacity requirement by waste stream and a gap against existing permitted capacity. The appeal case has to show which stream the proposal serves, where the arisings come from, that the facility sits in the right place in the hierarchy, and why the proximity principle supports this location.

Set this out in the Planning Statement and carry the same figures through every proof of evidence without variation. Nothing damages a case faster than a transport witness and a planning witness using different throughput tonnages.

Where the proposal is Schedule 1 or Schedule 2 development under the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017, the appeal proceeds on the Environmental Statement submitted with the application, updated where circumstances have changed. Minerals and waste schemes frequently fall within Schedule 1, and an Environmental Impact Assessment under those Regulations must be prepared by competent experts, so an AI-assisted draft is a structuring tool for that team rather than the submitted statement.

Restoration and aftercare conditions

Restoration is the issue that distinguishes a minerals appeal from everything else, and it is often the real battleground.

The 1990 Act provides for restoration conditions and for aftercare conditions requiring the land to be brought to the standard needed for agriculture, forestry or amenity, with an aftercare period of up to five years. Inspectors scrutinise the restoration scheme closely, because a permission that cannot be restored leaves a permanent harm.

What makes a restoration case credible is specificity. Final landform with levels and cross-sections, soil handling with volumes and storage locations, the aftercare regime year by year with the responsible party, and the proposed after-use with evidence it is achievable. Where the after-use is biodiversity, the biodiversity gain condition under the Environment Act 2021 regime interacts with it, and the statutory metric has to be completed by a competent person with the gain plan approved by the authority.

Financial security is normally dealt with through a planning obligation rather than a condition, since a condition cannot require money. Offer the bond or escrow arrangement rather than waiting to be asked, because an inspector worried about restoration delivery will take comfort from it.

Older permissions bring their own exercise. Periodic review of mineral permissions produces updated condition schedules, and any appeal touching an existing site needs the current schedule rather than the original decision notice.

Interaction with environmental permitting

Most waste facilities and many minerals operations need an environmental permit from the Environment Agency, running in parallel with planning.

The line between the two regimes is settled in principle and argued constantly in practice. The planning system decides whether the development is an acceptable use of land, and the permitting regime controls emissions, monitoring and operational standards. Planning Practice Guidance warns against duplicating pollution control through planning conditions, and an inspector will usually resist a condition that replicates a permit requirement.

Use that. Where a reason for refusal concerns emissions, odour, dust or leachate, the answer is often that the matter is controlled by the permit, supported by confirmation of the Agency's position. Conversely, do not assume the Agency's lack of objection disposes of an amenity issue, because the planning judgement on whether a use belongs in that location remains with the decision maker.

Procedure choice on larger schemes

For a substantial minerals or waste scheme, press for an inquiry rather than accepting a hearing. The technical evidence benefits from cross-examination, the policy arithmetic on landbanks and capacity gaps is better tested in that forum, and local opposition is usually organised enough that a hearing becomes unmanageable.

Three practical points on preparation. Agree a statement of common ground on the quantitative matters early, because it narrows the inquiry to judgement rather than data. Sequence the witnesses so the need case is established before the environmental effects are examined. And keep the restoration witness separate from the planning witness, since the two give different kinds of evidence.

Decisions on comparable proposals are useful, and inspectors do look at how others have approached landbank shortfalls and capacity gaps. Treat them as indicative of that approach rather than as binding, and there are better and worse ways of using appeal decisions in a planning application.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Check the position with your local planning authority or a qualified professional before relying on it.

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