Draft Black Country Plan

Comment

Representation ID: 23153

Received: 11/10/2021

Respondent: Black Country UNESCO Global Geopark Partnership

Agent: Black Country UNESCO Global Geopark Partnership

We are in general agreement with waste management policies in the plan and welcome point f) in policy W1 relating to the avoidance of adverse impacts on landscape and townscape, health, nature and heritage.

We support the recognition of stage 2 and 3 screening procedures that identify the importance of national and regional designated sites for natural and cultural heritage as important constraints (reference in table 10 site selection screening procedures)

Comment

Representation ID: 23154

Received: 11/10/2021

Respondent: Black Country UNESCO Global Geopark Partnership

Agent: Black Country UNESCO Global Geopark Partnership

We acknowledge the need to safeguard minerals and transformation to recycled materials as provisioned within the statements and policies of the plan. We have little to add but we are conscious that these workings will be the last significant exposures of the geology of the Black Country that will ever be made.

As such we would request that within policy MIN 4 that another bullet point (probably as an addition to bullet-point 3) is inserted to permit access to these workings to permit recording and sampling the geology prior to restoration of these last few mineral workings of the Black Country. This will then ensure some long-term heritage and knowledge gain for the Geopark before these last parts of the minerals industry of the Black Country are gone

Comment

Representation ID: 23155

Received: 11/10/2021

Respondent: Black Country UNESCO Global Geopark Partnership

Agent: Black Country UNESCO Global Geopark Partnership

Paragraph A1, we feel that this should include reference to its important natural heritage of internationally famous limestone fossils.

Paragraph A2 should also refer to the internationally renouned fossil collections on display at Dudley Museum in the Archives and Local history centre. It is also worth noting in this paragraph that Castle hill is a very important tourism ‘node’ within the Geopark.

Paragraph A7, needs to include its natural heritage in this narrative.- as it has world-renowned natural assets too of its fossil collections and sites like Castle Hill and Wrens Nest National Nature Reserve. These should not be omitted.

Paragraph A 16 Brierley Hill under bullet point i) it is worth including linkages between adjacent heritage sites such as Fens Pools (European sAC), saltwells National Nature Reserve(Literally just across the Pedmore Road from the site boundary and very significant to the landscape character here).