MMC Lose Case Agains the Revenue
9 April 2009
Further good news! MMC Midlands Ltd, the company who are doing the quarrying at Backdale Quarry, have lost an appeal against the Revenue and Customs.
MMC had avoided paying Aggregates Levy (a tax on limestone), claiming that the limestone represented "spoil" from the process of quarrying fluorspar. This was an astounding claim, since the main commercial activity at the quarry was the sale of limestone, and since they were arguing the exact opposite at in their other legal case against the Peak District National Park Authority - that the limestone was not "waste" and so could be sold, along side the fluorspar, despite the fact that the 1952 planning permission required them to leave "waste" on the site.
The aggregates levy is a tax on sand, gravel and rock that is dug from the ground or dredged from the sea in UK waters. The tax addresses the environmental damage caused by these business activities in the form of noise, dust and loss of biodiversity.
Quarry operators must pay a tax of £1.95 per tonne of sand, gravel or rock, increasing to £2 per tonne from 1 April 2009. MMC has plundered hundreds of thousands of tons of limestone from Backdale.
In an earlier hearing a "VAT and Duties Tribunal" had ruled that MMC was liable to pay the aggregates duty since "the taxpayer was carrying on a limestone quarrying business, and not a fluorspar mining business". MMC appealed, and following a hearing on 3 April their appeal has been turned down.
This is of considerable significance for Longstone Edge. MMC is now liable to pay the Revenue enormous sums of money, and the economics of any further quarrying looks substantially worse. Watch this space...
A summary of the judgement is available here.