Environment minister Michael Meacher has announced that a further £13.5 million will be made available through the the Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund over the coming year.

The Countryside Agency, English Nature, and English Heritage, in consultation with local authorities, interest groups and the aggregates industry, will distribute grants to local projects to deliver a wide range of benefits to areas which are, or have been, affected by aggregates extraction.

Forum Response: Countryside Agency

Richard Wakeford, chief executive of the Countryside Agency, told ePolitix.com: "Extraction of chalk, limestone and other aggregates can damage historic landscapes and local biodiversity. It can cause increased heavy traffic through villages that can't cope with it.

"We know that there are lots of communities with ideas to overcome these problems. They plan landscape restoration, public access and recreation facilities. Some even propose buying out historic rights to quarry. We are now ready to receive project proposals from anyone directly or indirectly affected by aggregates extraction."

Forum Response: English Nature

Andy Brown, acting chief executive of English Nature, told ePolitix.com: "English Nature is delighted to assist in distributing part of the Sustainability Fund. It will have a significant impact and will enable local communities to increase biodiversity, conserve geological features and address the threat from old, unused mineral permissions.

"We will fund a wide range of projects that deliver such things as habitat restoration and creation, species recovery, local biodiversity action plans, improving geologically important sites and addressing potentially damaging effects of old mineral permissions.

"We are particularly looking forward to working in close partnership with the aggregates industry, local authorities and communities, English Heritage and the Countryside Agency to ensure that the long-term objective of sustainable development is achieved."

Forum Response: English Heritage

Dr Simon Thurley, chief executive of English Heritage, told ePolitix.com: "This opens upexciting possibilities. Some of the most important archaeological projects of the past twenty years or more have taken place in advance of aggregate extraction.

"Now we have the opportunity to synthesise this work and to make the information available to a wider public. We have already received many good ideas for projects.

"We particularly need to understand better the historic environment of areas rich in aggregates, both on land and underwater, and develop predictive modelling for the benefit of the industry and planning authorities and improve further decision making.

English Heritage's first allocation was to an excavation in a Norfolk Quarry where internationally important remains of ice age mammoths and neanderthals were discovered.