MAJOR plans by Britain’s biggest quarry company to extend the life of one site and open another in North Yorkshire are set to be approved.

The aim of the proposals is to provide millions of tonnes of sand and gravel to maintain supplies over the next 20 years.

The schemes are within just a few miles of each other at Scorton Quarry and Killerby Quarry, on the Richmondshire and Hambleton district council boundary.

Quarrying at Scorton, which has been worked since the 1950s, was due to end in December 2016, with 12 months for restoration work.

But operators Tarmac Ltd have now applied for planning permission to carry on working there until the end of 2020.

They want to tie in the rounding up of the Scorton workings with the excavation of a former quarry at Ellerton and open a new operation, which they want to create on a greenfield site at Killerby.

The new quarry, covering around 450 acres, would have a life of 17 years and would involve the building of two bridges over the River Swale.

Tarmac Ltd plan to extract more than 11 million tonnes of sand and gravel from the site – 650,000 tonnes a year. The work will be phased, with three lakes established when it is completed and other land returned to agricultural use.

Both planning applications are recommended for approval when North Yorkshire County Council’s planning committee meets today, with extensive conditions to control the development.

In a report on the Scorton site, planning officer Vicky Perkin said: ”The proposal constitutes a sustainable quarry development that could help to maintain the long-term supply of sand and gravel to the market place.

“Substantial weight should be attached to the fact that the majority of the site falls within an identified ‘Area of Search’.”

Ms Perkins said there is no identified quantifiable existing need for the material. However, weight needs attaching to the fact that there is a need for new reserves if environmentally suitable locations are found, by extending quarries or opening new ones.

Planning officer Alan Goforth said the Scorton quarry extension did not increase the size or deviate from original plans and it was considered the reserves could be extracted without causing “unacceptable harm”.