[Mark Davies]

<font color='#000080'>I don't think the council could give a toss about diving there or the deaths, they just used this as an excuse to block Small's main interest - landfill.

And to correct some of the comments earlier, it was never his intention to fill in the quarry. As I've said before, his interests extend to much of the land surrounding Dotty that is currently covered with slate slag - this was where he was planning to use as landfill, after clearing the slate as aggregate for road construction.

There is a separate partner who's always been lined up to develop the quarry for diving. Of course this has nothing to do with any interest or altruism on Small's part - I'm sure he only ever saw it as a sweetener to try and get his other plans passed. Unfortunately, because of other issues in local politics (mainly competing interests for European money and targets for councils to reduce landfill) his plans were on for an uphill struggle. The plans to develop the site for diving backfired when deaths there gave the council ammunition to refuse it.

I'd say there is every chance for plans to develop the site for diving to be passed, providing they are independent from anything else. The only problem is that the council would now need to back-track on previous objections and to do that they'd have to impose serious conditions in the planning permission, purely to save face. That's going to prove expensive, but I don't see why Dotty wouldn't be as big a draw and as successful as Stoney and the NDC, so I'd say it could still be viable.

All that waits to be seen is if Small is prepared to sell off the quarry in part or if he insists on selling his entire interest as a whole.