COUNTY councillors are to get a strong blast over plans to extend quarrying at a Rossendale beauty spot.

Marshalls, owners of Scout Moor Quarry, Ramsbottom, have applied for permission to extract an extra 470,000 tonnes of rough rock a year - one third destined for its concrete works in Ramsbottom and the rest for Halifax.

Rossendale Council engineers estimate the extra quarrying would mean 450 lorryloads of rock a day heading for the M66 through Edenfield via a tight mini roundabout junction.

And they are unconvinced by plans to improve road junctions and erect new signs in the village which they say will not help local residents who have to put up with the extra traffic. The application will be determined by Lancashire County Council but local councillors have slammed as "merely cosmetic" the £50,000 of roadworks proposed by Marshalls and accepted by the county council.

Edenfield councillor Philip Dunne praised the residents' associations of Turn and Edenfield for their determined fight against the plans.

He told the council's Engineering Committee: "I am pleased that we will be objecting in the strongest possible terms to this proposal.

"This committee will know that £50,000 doesn't go far. It will be only cosmetic work."

Committee chairman Coun Alan Fishwick added: "In the 19th century special railways were built to carry stone from quarries. We are now talking of moving it by road which is quite a primitive way."

Rossendale Council is also backing English Nature's objections on the grounds that the area has been designated a Biological Heritage Site because it contains a rare type of blanket bog.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is also concerned about twite, golden plover, curlew and wheatear which breed in the area.

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