Mineral Planning for Mineral Planners Reviews

The course has been excellent for me, written in a way that can be easily understood, has covered everything I need to know as a Minerals Planner and has helped me in my day to day job enormously. Although I've had some internal training within the team and have been shadowing various Officers there is so much to learn, and my Manager and colleagues are very busy in their daily roles, so this has been a huge help to me in learning the job. The only negative if I was to find one is that it has been quite heavygoing, with a lot of reading in each unit, although everything I've read has been really interesting so I'm not quite sure how that can be improved/ condensed! Now that I've completed the course and read everything, I would like to download all the units to a series of PDFs so that I can retain for future reference but I'm not sure whether that can be done easily?...

As a qualified planner (district matters) for nearly 30 years many aspects were already known. However, it is recognised that most people will not have that knowledge. Some of the planning material was a little out of date, but it is understood that this course is being revised for the next intake. Notwithstanding this, the level of information and how it was presented was well done. It was of good 'bite sized' chunks which has enabled gradual reading and learning. The headings will enable reference back to clarify matters if and when it is necessary. The foundation of minerals planning and operations in such a way has been well done.

Very interesting subject where I gained a lot of deeper knowledge esp during research for the assessment when comparing the course notes to live applications in the UK and locally.

Very good

Great course. Would definitely recommend.

I have found the course invaluable. As well as learning more about the details of minerals operations and the more technical areas around soils, waste and permitting which were newer topics for me, I feel my background knowledge on the minerals planning system has increased too, for example around the old mining permissions and how the ROMP process came about. On a personal level this course has directly enabled me to do my job better, looking at minerals safeguarding and Minerals Resource Assessments, and also working on Call for SItes for minerals which I am currently undertaking now as part of our new Local Plan.

The online learning needs significant work to ensure it makes sense AND to ensure it's engaging and interesting - it is dull dull dull. The in person day of learning and site visit were really interesting and I learned so much. The venue was good, the refreshments were lovely. I had no phone signal on the approach to the site so it might be worth issuing the 'what 3 words' code to attendees going forward. It would have been helpful to have asked all attendees of the course if they were happy to share their contact details. I would recommend it to colleagues but as it stands, I would caveat it.

An enjoyable and useful course. It was pitched at a level where someone with experience in the minerals sector could engage to go over their experience and then build on it. The site visit was an excellent way to bring together the online material and to expand my professional network of both private and public sector professionals in the sector. I also thought the venue and subsequent presentation by the quarry manager was a great choice.