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Highways England withdraws DCO application for Lower Thames Crossing Project to avoid a certain rejection
Highways England has announced that it has withdrawn the Development Consent Order (DCO) application for the Lower Thames Crossing Project to avoid rejection.
The application was submitted on 23rd October 2020. Highways Englands' original application is understood to have been deficient in some areas and needed to be updated after the initial submission. When those updates were also not sufficient, the application had to be withdrawn on 20th November. Had it not been withdrawn, reportedly it faced a certain rejection in its present form because of environmental and ecological concerns.
The Planning Inspectorate Meeting Notes dated 13 November 2020 and 18 November 2020 says:
The application was received by the Inspectorate on 23 October 2020. On 9 November 2020, under Regulation 5(5) of The Infrastructure Planning (Applications: Prescribed Form and Procedures) Regulations 2009 the Inspectorate requested for the Applicant to provide all responses to the consultation carried out under Part 5 of the PA2008. The Inspectorate also requested for the Applicant to provide unredacted information from the Consultation Report submitted with the application in order to enable the information in the Consultation Report to be matched with the responses received under Regulation 5(5). The Applicant provided the consultation responses and the unredacted information on 11 November 2020.
On 13 November 2020, the Inspectorate contacted Highways England to establish that the Inspectorate would be progressing to issue a decision to not accept the application and identified the main issues that had arisen from the consideration of the application. Highways England were provided with an opportunity to signpost where in the submitted application documents information relevant to the main issues were set out. Highways England provided a document that contained sign posting on 17 November 2020.The Inspectorate continued to progress to issue a decision to not accept the application informing Highways England of this on 18 November 2020.
The Applicant decided to withdraw the application on 20 November 2020.
The Inspectorate will meet with the Applicant to give advice in respect of the issues that were identified in the withdrawn application documents and other relevant information.
Highways England has announced the withdrawal as ""We’ve withdrawn the Development Consent Order application for the Lower Thames Crossing based on early feedback we’ve had from the Planning Inspectorate. We will take time to collate the information required for the specific points raised and will be resubmitting the application early in the new year."
And with a subsequent announcement, Highways England has laid out plans for re-application:
"On 20 November 2020, we withdrew our application for a Development Consent Order based on early feedback we received from the Planning Inspectorate.
The fundamentals of the Lower Thames Crossing, including its objectives and location, will remain the same but we will further develop some technical information related to some elements of the scheme before we resubmit our application next year. .
The Lower Thames Crossing will improve the journeys for millions of road users, support tens of thousands of jobs, and create a new connection that will bring billions of pounds of economic benefit to build back the post-Brexit and post-Covid economy. We are committed to delivering the project as soon as possible, in a way that is open and transparent, to provide the greatest benefits to communities and road users."
The Planning Directorate's Meeting Notes dated 13 & 20 November 2020
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This is odd.
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cover tunnel photo by: Matt Brown from London, England / CC BY
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