Peter Doyle, the chairman of the Geoconservation Commission of the Geological Society who has spearheaded the move to create an English Stone Forum along the lines of the Scottish Stone Liaison Group, has sought the support of the Standing Joint Committee on Natural Stone to progress the idea.

The English Stone Forum is intended to grow out of a three-day conference held in the Yorkshire Museum, York, in March that was staged by the Geoconservation Commission with the financial backing of English Heritage and English Nature.

The Geoconservation Commission (GCC) has a broad spectrum of members, as does the Standing Joint Committee on Natural Stone (SJCNS), with some overlap of interests. But Peter Doyle felt the architectural interest on the SJCNS, as well as the fact it encompassed interests from many parts of the stone industry, including Stone Federation Great Britain, which forms its secretariat, made it the ideal vehicle to progress the idea of the Forum.

He was invited to attend the meeting of the SJCNS in October to present his views and has been invited back to future meetings. In October he said the government\'s Minerals Policy Statement 1, at the time in the public domain for consultation, and the Symonds Report on the stone industry that preceded it, raised issues about planning and supply that an English Stone Forum "could put wings on".

The problem with an English Stone Forum, compared with the Scottish Stone Liaison Group and the Welsh Stone Forum, has always been the size of the task.

Scotland and Wales are well defined and limited in size with relatively easy lines of communication, even up to their ministerial levels - more like a region in England.

The problems of representing the whole of England have concerned the steering committee of the GCC that has been trying to establish an English Stone Forum to champion English stones since the conference in March.

A significant element in the success of the Scottish Stone Liaison Group is accepted as the financial backing it has received from Historic Scotland. That has enabled full-time staff to be employed to further its aims.

As Peter Doyle says: "If a Forum is to do anything meaningful there has to be a power base and a money base."

Following Peter Doyle\'s presentation to the SJCNS and further discussion by the committee after the presentation, SJCNS chairman Ian Thomas, who is director of the National Stone Centre in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, has written to Peter Doyle.

In the letter, Ian Thomas says Jane Buxey, director of Stone Federation Great Britain, and he would liaise with the Stone Federation Quarries Forum to ascertain what role they might play in an English Stone Forum.

He said the SJCNS would also revisit its terms of reference, compare them with the York conference resolutions and see how they fit together and whether changes of emphasis need to be made.

Peter Doyle said after receiving the letter that he was encouraged by the enthusiasm it expressed. "The meeting threw up a lot of ifs and buts, but no real reason why we shouldn\'t pursue the idea."