Environmental impacts of the proposed London Gateway port development, Thurrock, Essex. Alastair Grant Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, University of East Anglia

On 25th February 2003, the public equiry began into proposals by P&O and Shell to redevelop the former Shell Haven oil refinery into a container port. The enquiry closed on 5th September 2003. On 20th July 2005, the Transport Minister Derek Twigg indicated that the government was "minded to approve" the development, subject to satisfactory proposals to upgrade transport links to the site (see news stories in the Guardian newspaper and Environmental Data Interactive). Final approval was given on 30th May 2007 (see full text of decision letter on Department for Transport website). Some information is available on the developers website at: www.londongateway.com and the full planning inspector's report is also available from the Department of Transport.

English Nature objected to the proposed development, and considers that "the project as proposed would be seriously damaging to nature conservation at international, national and local levels". They consider that the development could potentially have adverse effects on a number of areas designated as Ramsar sites, Special Protection Areas (SPAs) under the EU "Birds" Directive and as candidate Special Areas of Conservation (cSACs) under the EU "Habitats" Directive. A summary of their objections is available here. The planning inspector considered that the development will indeed damage these "Natura 2000" areas. If the Secretary of State agrees, then the proposals could only procede if appropriate measures were put in place to compensate for the areas lost or damaged by the development, and potential sites for the creation of new intertidal areas have been identified on arable land adjacent to the western end of the site and at Blythe Sands on the south bank of the Thames, opposite the site. There is some debate about the extent to which it is possible to create intertidal habitats that provide adequate compensation for intertidal areas lost during developments such as this, and we recently reviewed the literature on this question for English Nature. A copy of our report to English Nature is available via this page.

Details of the public enquiry, including full transcripts of proceedings, are available on the Planning Inspectorate web site. A map of the site is available via Multimap.

There is also some local objection to the development, and an action group maintains a website with regular updates, and their own assessment of environmental impacts.

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Professor Alastair Grant (A.Grant@uea.ac.uk)

Director,
Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation
School of Environmental Sciences
University of East Anglia
Norwich
NR4 7TJ
UK

If you maintain websites that contain information on the London Gateway development or have other relevant information, please email me with details and I will consider including them here.

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