Experts object to plans to create a waterpark resort at derelict Derbyshire quarry

Plans from BMET Ltd to turn Crich Quarry into the Amber Rock Resort, including a 152-bed hotel, 128 straw-bale lodges, 210 holiday apartments, a waterpark and a cliff-top restaurant, were submitted in February last year and have yet to be decided.

The last update on the proposed scheme was that Derbyshire County Council, which will ultimately decide on the plans, had served the developer with a rarely-used formal notice with a list of demands for further information to counter widespread objections and shortfalls. Not following through with these demands, issued in June 2022, would see the plans rejected outright due to a lack of information.

Now, more than a year since that notice was served, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) – a France-based independent organisation with expert members from all over the world – has levied its objection to the scheme.

In brief, it concludes: “To achieve avoidance of negative impacts, the Amber Rock development in the Cliff Quarry at Crich should not proceed and that natural rehabilitation of the quarry currently provides the only option for such an avoidance of negative impacts.”

This broadly relates to the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site, which carries international significance and protection requirements and lies close to the quarry, along with the Crich Stand monument which overlooks the quarry itself. Crich Stand is a World War I memorial and a Grade-II listed building which is also heavily protected.

ICOMOS writes: “The Amber Rock development will, if implemented, introduce a new development type in the setting of the property.

“Historic England has objected to the Cliff Quarry, Crich, proposal, concluding that the development would harm the landscape of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage property, and that ‘no clear and convincing justification is provided for the scale of development proposed or the potential harm to the significance of heritage assets that would be likely to result’. ICOMOS shares this assessment.”

It raises broader concerns about the cumulative impact on the world heritage site, which has been under heightened risk through two approved planning applications for houses in Belper and an apartment block in Derby, along with the decline of the historic Belper Mills complex.