Tarmac wants a waste fuel plant, concrete works and 23MW solar farm at Shawell Quarry, by Gibbet Hill. Lorries on Gibbet Lane would rise from 197 to 363 a day.
People have until Friday 23 October to comment on plans to turn Shawell Quarry, beside Gibbet Hill roundabout, into a waste and energy site. The quarry is in Leicestershire, about 5km north east of Rugby. Its lorries use the roundabout that thousands of Rugby drivers cross every day on the A426.
Tarmac Aggregates has applied to Leicestershire County Council for a waste fuel plant, a construction waste recycling plant, two concrete works and a solar farm on the 145-hectare site. The application, reference 2026/EIA/0054/LCC, was received on 19 May and validated on 7 September. The county’s register gives 23 October as the end of the public consultation.
What Tarmac wants to build
The application covers the land at the old quarry, also known as Cotesbach Landfill, north of Gibbet Lane between Shawell and Cotesbach. Sand and gravel extraction there has finished. Landfilling is permitted until 2044.
The application includes:
- a solid recovered fuel plant in the former composting building, turning non-recyclable waste into fuel
- a wash plant recycling construction and demolition waste into aggregate
- a ready-mix concrete plant and a concrete block plant
- a plant to treat leachate, the liquid that drains from the landfill, with wetland cells
- a biomethane injection plant and gas engines with carbon capture, up to 12MW
- a solar farm of up to 23MW and battery storage of up to 10MW
- electric lorry and biogas refuelling
- an office building of about 930 square metres
Tarmac’s transport assessment says the fuel plant would take about 200,000 tonnes of waste a year. It says the source material will come from Coventry City Council. The fuel would go by lorry to Tarmac’s cement works at Tunstead, near Buxton in Derbyshire, in place of coal.
The wash plant could take up to 250,000 tonnes of construction waste a year. Tarmac says the recycled aggregate would supply the concrete and block plants on the same site.
The environmental statement’s summary says the scheme would support about 50 full-time equivalent jobs on site. It claims carbon savings of about 100,000 tonnes a year.
The lorry numbers
The argument is over lorries, and the figures come from Tarmac’s own documents.
The existing permissions cap the site at 2,544 lorry movements a week. That is 2,244 for the quarry and landfill and 300 for composting. Tarmac’s transport assessment puts the new scheme at 1,994 a week, or 363 a day. On that comparison it calls the scheme a reduction of 99 lorry movements a day.
The environmental statement also records what Gibbet Lane carries now. Its 2026 baseline table gives 197 lorry movements a day on the lane west of the site. The statement notes that this is well below the 462 a day the permissions allow.
So the scheme would carry fewer lorries than the old permissions allow, but more than use the lane today. Measured against today’s count, 363 a day is 166 more.
The statement shares those lorries out across the roundabout’s arms. It assigns 166 lorry movements a day to the A426 south, the road to M6 junction 1 and Rugby. That arm already carries about 2,900 a day, by the same table.
Existing routing rules keep the site’s lorries out of Shawell village, and Tarmac says the new scheme would keep to them. The transport assessment notes that Gibbet Hill roundabout is in Warwickshire. Warwickshire County Council is the highway authority for the A426 towards Rugby.
What the consultees have said so far
National Highways runs the A5, M1 and M6. In a response dated 29 September it recommended that the application should not be approved for three months, to give Tarmac time to supply more information. It accepted Tarmac’s lorry assumptions. But it noted that the air quality assessment was preliminary, with its impacts and conclusions sections “blank at this stage”. It also asked for screening where the glint and glare assessment found high impacts, including points on the M1 and Gibbet Lane.
Shawell Parish Meeting discussed the plan on 8 October and objects strongly. Its objection says lorry movements on Gibbet Lane have been falling since extraction stopped. It says the scheme would bring them “up to their previous levels and beyond”. It also says that:
- the waste plant has no reason to be in a rural location now the minerals are worked out
- National Highways has accepted that Gibbet roundabout has been at full capacity for years, so Shawell’s lanes are used as relief roads
- the solar farm would cover farmland that has already been restored
- the composting building, dormant since April 2017, was only permitted for the life of the landfill
Harborough District Council raised concerns on 14 October about:
- the overall scale of the plans in a rural location
- any weakening of the agreed restoration of the site
- solar panels transforming views from Lutterworth Road, Gibbet Lane and public footpaths
- the effect on Gibbet Lane, a narrow country lane
- residents’ amenity and Shawell Conservation Area
No response from Rugby Borough Council or Warwickshire County Council was on the register on 18 October.
What it means for you
If you drive the A426 between Rugby and Lutterworth, or use Gibbet Hill to reach the A5 or M6, this decision affects your journey. The county council takes it, not Rugby.
- To comment: use the comment form on the county’s planning register, or email planningcontrol@leics.gov.uk quoting 2026/EIA/0054/LCC.
- Deadline: the register gives Friday 23 October 2026 as the end of the consultation.
- To read the plans: the transport assessment and environmental statement are on the same page. Tarmac’s summary of the environmental statement is the shortest way in.
Comments that deal with planning matters, such as traffic, noise, landscape and flooding, are the ones a council can weigh. National Highways has asked the county not to approve the scheme for three months from its 29 September response, which runs to late December.
For applications inside the borough, see our Rugby planning news page. Road closures around Gibbet Hill and the M6 are on our roadworks and travel page.
Have your say