Sirius welcomes delay to Yorkshire Moors planning meeting

5th Jun 2013 08:27

Potash miner Sirius Minerals has revealed that the upcoming planning permission meeting for its Yorkshire mine has been delayed by almost a month. Sirius said it welcomed the extra time as it allowed further feedback from stakeholders to be provided to the planning committee of the North York Moors National Park Authority, after the company had provided further information during some recent stakeholder discussions.The planning meeting scheduled for July 2nd 2013 has been put back to July 29th 2013.Sirius explained that it had engaged in "positive discussions" to resolve a number of outstanding objections from key statutory bodies, which is expected to include the Ministry of Defence, Environment Agency, and Natural England. During these discussions, Sirius said it had provided new information to clarify certain details, which had then required the Park Authority to undertake a "re-consultation exercise on that information to ensure robustness of the determination process".Chris Fraser, Managing Director and CEO of Sirius, said: "We welcome a small extension that allows the remaining issues to be properly considered by the Authority before it makes its decision on 29th July. "We remain focused on achieving the positive determination that will enable the project to progress rapidly towards production and will unlock all of the benefits to the local, regional and national economies."Broker Sanlam added: "Nobody can predict the outcome here, but one would hope that the region's need for employment and the high environmental standards proposed by Sirius will result in planning permission being granted eventually."Sanlam cited the case of Scotgold Resources, "which received planning permission in a National Park, the National Parks Authority and other stakeholders rejected the first planning application but after some changes it successfully went through the re-application process"."We are not expecting a simple 'everything is fine, go and build the mine' on July 29th 2013, instead some recommendations which hopefully Sirius will be able to resolve." Shares in Sirius Minerals were flat at 24.5p at 08:50 on Wednesday.OH